Love Actually is a film I hate actually, but I know a lot of you don’t, so I’m not here to ruin it. Instead here is one of my ‘sex and relationships education guides to …..’ I’ve done a few of these guides now, but finally I’ve done Love Actually.
It’s a companion piece to the film, to help you to refine and develop your searing hot takes about it. If you have a nerdy parent who insists that you watch it with them over Christmas, you can perhaps work on this together!
Content note
If you’re going to watch the film you should know it has a lot of fatphobia in it – a lot. I’m going to write about it below because it’s almost as if ‘fatness’ has it’s own story line. There’s also a little bit of trans/homophobia in it. Also to be fair, there is a little bit of queer affirming stuff in the film too.
What kind of ‘Love, Actually’?
The film is about love, and at the beginning the Hugh Grant character says he likes to hang around at airports to watch it. Gets him out of the house I suppose. What kinds of love are we talking about here though? Thinking about the whole film, how many different kinds of love are there? Use this graphic to help you (which comes from this resource about different kinds of love).
Do you notice in the film times when some of the different kinds of love are more important than other kinds? Are there times when someone makes a decision about which kind is the most important? Over the whole film, which is the kind of love that comes up the most? Is there a ‘message’ about what ‘love actually’ means?
Different kinds of relationships in Love Actually
There are different kinds of relationships in the movie as well as there being different kinds of love. The Alan Rickman / Hans Gruber character says at one point that his employee should tell another employee that she should say that she wants to ‘marry him, shag him and have his babies.’ Which is all about doing one kind of relationship in one very particular way. One man, one woman, monogamous commitment, little family unit etc.
Nowadays we are all more used to the idea of there being different kinds of relationships, which we might do in different ways, sharing different aspects of our lives, with different people. Monogamy, polyamory, ENM (Ethical Non-Monogamy), FWB (friends with benefits), situationships, don’t ask don’t tell, are different ways of doing sexual/romantic relationships which we are more familiar with now. Which of the relationships in the movie might benefit from a more ‘2024 way’ of doing relationships?
Here’s a guide to all the different ways we might do relationships, like monogamy and polyamory. Also here’s one about how to use venn diagrams to work out how much of our lives we could share with someone.
The Harry, Mia, Karen affair
Harry buys Mia, whom he has the hots for, an expensive (tacky) gold necklace. (Hans Gruber would never.) His wife Karen figures this out on Christmas Eve when she thought she was getting this gold necklace and instead got a Joni Mitchell CD (which is actually a better gift). Anyway, it’s clear that this was an affair: AKA the worst thing that can happen ever. They appear to have one brief conversation and then the next time we see them, they’ve broken up. (After he comes back from a holiday?) Let’s assume that these characters had more than this one conversation, what might they say to each other? What kinds of things do they need to sort out? House, kids, etc? Could they have changed the nature of their relationship so that they might allow for a relationship with Mia?
If you’re stuck for ideas try my resource about negotiating a relationship.
The Juliet, Peter, Mark obsession
This is the now infamous story line which features Mark (who to me will always be Egg from This Life) is obsessed with his best mate’s wife. The film portrays this as being ‘a bit off, but also sweet’ but nowadays we might be more likely to see this as being non-consensual. This ‘loving at’ someone really isn’t love. Clearly Mark is feeling very heavy and difficult feelings but that doesn’t make it ‘love’. It also makes him unhappy and he’s very lucky that Juliet sees this as sweet and not non-consensual, creepy, or scary.
Anyway, for this story of the film let’s think about the kind of work that Mark has to do on himself. He’s very unhappy experiencing these feelings. Imagine that you’re a mate of Mark, what kind of advice might you give him? You could try the guide I wrote about Crushes and Unrequited Love and see what you come up with. I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments btw!
Billy Mack and Joe bro-down
Let’s think about how this relationship is about how men relate to masculinity. During the film notice how they navigate going from hardness (coded as ‘masculine’) to softness (coded as ‘unmasculine’). Look at how they touch each other on Christmas day. How do they communicate their love for each other? At what point do they know that they are loved?
In my guide to being a man I talk about jam doughnuts, the dough being what we men learn about how to ‘do’ being a man, and how the jam is our feelings, emotions, and soft bits.
When are they dough and when are they jam?
Jamie and Aurelia and the eel pond
This is the English posh writer bloke and the Portuguese working class woman who has to work several jobs to make ends meet. Pay her more Jamie! There’s a lot I despise about how this relationship ends up*, but I won’t bore you with that. Just think about the cute bits with the pond and the house. Do you think it’s possible to get feelings for someone if you can’t speak the same language? When did they know they both have feelings? How did they know? Let’s say they had sex, is it possible to have really good consensual sex without being able to speak the same language?
(*Ditching your loving family at Christmas. Incredible fatphobia. Patriarchal ideas of ownership of women. Public marriage proposals. Are they in France or Portugal? France? Then where did she get the ferry to?)
David and Natalie at No.10
I find this really tricky, so perhaps you have some ideas. Imagine that you’re single, you’re the Prime Minister of the UK, Tiffany from Eastenders is bringing you really great biscuits and you get the hots for her. If you say ‘hey I like you, would you like to go on a date?’ would she be able to say no? How would it affect her career if she said yes or no?
There are a lot of power dynamics going on in the film aren’t there? Employee / employer relationships are like half of the main stories. There are also relationships where people are dependent on the relationship working so they have somewhere to sleep. When we have power, how can we turn the volume levels down enough? If we don’t have as much power, or if there’s a lot to lose, what can we do? What role does society have to play in this?
Here’s an article about how we navigate power in relationships.
The Love Actually of thinness
Fat people don’t get to have romantic love in Love Actually. Bodies are policed and declared loveable or unlovable entirely based on their fat/thinness. In the famous ‘placard’ scene, Egg from This Life says that Juliet is perfect, just after holding up a placard with images of very slim women which he has ripped out of fashion / men’s magazines: women who look just like her.
Anyway, I’m ranting and that’s not my job. How far have we come as a culture since Love Actually came out? Have we challenged the beauty standards, to make it more okay for different kinds of people to be considered beautiful? Is it as important to be beautiful, or are other things more important now? Have we challenged the beauty standards, or have we replaced one set of standards for another?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Also here’s my advice about how to feel better about your body.
What is love?
Going back to the different kinds of love, I think there are maybe two different ‘ways of loving’ in this film. Pragma, is the slow, on-going, supportive, pragmatic, ‘being there’ love of Billy Mack and Joe, Sarah and her really ill brother. Ludus, is the fun, silly, playful, fast, ‘falling in love’ love of Harry and Mia, Sarah and Karl, that silly English man and his new American friends. Relationships probably need to be a bit of both right? How might all of the relationships be different if they all had a combination of both of these different kinds of love?
Thinking more about this, to what extent does love ‘happen’ and to what extent do we ‘make it happen’. There are moments in the film where love seems to happen like a thunderbolt, something we have no control over but is that a helpful idea? You might like these articles about love and this ancient video I made about what love is.
The loving assemblage
At the end of the film they show ‘look nearly all the main characters have some kind of relationship with each other’. Isn’t that sweet? A thing to imagine here is to think about how all of the loving relationships they have with each other work. If they were to put as much energy into these other kinds of relationships, how might that affect them?
I was paying attention to the staff in the hospital where Sarah was visiting her brother. What loving relationships did they have in their lives that made it possible for them to be there, doing this really hard job, over the Christmas period? How if we treat each other with love, care, consent that might increase all of our capacities to love.
© Justin Hancock, 2024 Find out more about me and BISH here.
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