Love Actually doesn't quite qualify as one of those movies that has us from "Hello," but it's not for lack of trying. The opening shots of ordinary folks joyously reuniting at airport arrival gates are all but guaranteed to get us glowing. And if that doesn't do it for you, just wait. Something's bound to come along in a minute or two that you'll like even better.
Love Actually is a movie by Richard Curtis, a fellow who knows how to make us feel good about feeling good. From Four Weddings and a Funeral to Notting Hill, his scripts have proven consistently funny, energetic, romantic, and just smart and quirky enough to compensate for stray moments of unruly sappiness. Love Actually, Curtis' first self-directed project, breaks absolutely no new ground, but it showcases most of the things the writer-director does best.
Curtis interweaves nearly a dozen tales here, showing us all kinds of love, from the puppy and unrequited varieties, to office romances to power worship that might or might not be love, actually. (A surprising number of the relationships on display involve employees yearning after their bosses, but probably the less said about that the better.) There are some weddings and a funeral, of course, lots of delightfully odd little moments (Bill Nighy, best of all, as an over-the-hill rocker on the comeback trail), and the all-star ensemble cast is as smashing as you'd expect an all-star cast like this to be.
Hugh Grant is probably the biggest all-star here, as well as the major selling point of Love Actually, and the irony of it all is that this would be an infinitely better movie if he simply didn't appear in it. Grant is absurdly miscast as the eminently eligible Prime Minister of England (!), and his sweetly stammering, eye-fluttering schtick is pretty much a parody of itself here. Things are embarrassing enough even before he strips down to his undies for a little Risky Business dancing at 10 Downing Street.
With the possible exception of Grant's P.M., however, the characters here are fairly appealing in one way or another. Many of them are pretty foolish, though, and folly (and cliché) follows most of the movie's relationships. Every guy seems to be in love with his best friend's girl or shagging someone he shouldn't, and every girl is on the rebound, emotionally paralyzed, or letting her husband get away with some seedy little affair. It's mostly played for laughs rather than pathos, though, and Curtis manages to make even the most ridiculous actions seem sweetly, consummately human.
The movie's real agenda (if you can call it an agenda) lies in teasing that fine line that separates the romantics from the pure and simple idiots. None of it ultimately matters much, though, since Love Actually awards happy endings to all, urging its characters along to the fulfillment of their romantic daydreams, like lemmings to the sea. And like those lemmings, it's hard for those of us in the audience not to get caught up in the movie's glib, carefully orchestrated enthusiasm, even when every bone in our body is telling us what we're watching is simply too much of a good thing.
Sleep Time Again
The always intriguing Sleep of Reason cinema series returns from summer hiatus this week with a selection of fall films guaranteed to raise the dead. The new season kicks off on Saturday, Nov. 8, with Larry Clark's notorious Ken Park, double-billed with Panic in Needle Park, starring a pre-Godfather Al Pacino. The Pacino film is a gritty, groundbreaking slab of 1970s cinema, but Ken Park is the real coup here. Clark's ultra-edgy film has been banned in just about every country for its frank depictions of teen sex and general bad behavior, and, with no U.S. distributors or even a DVD deal in sight, this quite possibly could be your one and only chance to check it out. You might just wind up hating the movie, of course, but controversy's the whole name of the game here. Miss it and you'll be excluding yourself from a lot of interesting conversations in the weeks to come.
Showtime is 7 p.m. at Covivant Gallery, 4906 N. Florida Ave., Tampa. For more information visit www.covivant.com or e-mail sleepofreasoncinema@yahoo.com. Cine World 2003
Sarasota's always intriguing Cine-World Film Festival takes place this year Nov. 7-16, offering some 40 movies, give or take a few. Almost any one of those movies will give film lovers something to celebrate.
As usual, this year's festival features a number of films that made a splash at one or more of the big international film festivals held earlier this year, such as the events in Toronto and New York. Some of the more notable of these selections include the Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee The Cooler (starring William H. Macy and Alec Baldwin), and Denys Arcand's Cannes favorite, The Barbarian Invasions, the director's follow-up to The Decline of the American Empire. Other hot draws at this year's festival are sure to include Robert Altman's The Company, Sylvia (starring Gwyneth Paltrow as terminally depressed poet Sylvia Plath) and a new version of The Singing Detective featuring an all-star cast including Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes and Mel Gibson.
There's an emphasis on French cinema at this year's Cine-World festival, beginning with a tribute to the great Jean-Pierre Melville that includes the director's masterpieces Bob le Flambeur and Le Circle Rouge. Then there's an entire Gallic sidebar that includes Claude Chabrols' new thriller Flower of Evil, and Almost Peaceful, a refreshingly unsentimental account of Jewish Holocaust survivors struggling to make new lives for themselves in post-war Paris. Old favorites Omar Sharif and Isabelle Huppert make appearances as well: Huppert in the edgy La Vie Promise and Sharif as a shopkeeper introducing a young boy to the joys of Islam in Msr. Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran.
France is only one of the countries represented at this year's Cine-World, a festival where international coproductions abound. England teams up with Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark, respectively, in the Vermeer bio-pic Girl with the Pearl Earring, Jim Sheridan's acclaimed In America, and the bittersweet comedy Wilber Wants to Kill Himself. Spain and Argentina join forces on Marcelo Pineyro's coming-of-ager Kamchatka, while Hungarian director István Szabo gets American actor Harvey Keitel to star in his German-set epic Taking Sides. Denmark and Germany both contribute to the highly regarded Icelandic drama Noi Albinoi. And if all that pan-globalism weren't confusing enough, there's Japanese Story, which turns out to be a film from Australia.
Of all the international film I've been able to preview from this year's festival, my favorite is Crimson Gold by Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director responsible for The White Balloon (just to belabor the global stew, France and Italy are the other components in this co-production). Panahi rigorously reconstructs small, everyday events in the life of a Tehran pizza deliveryman, giving us a fascinating, typically understated look at the various strata of Iranian society. The movie ultimately makes some devastating points about simmering class warfare as it depicts a basically good man's descent into crime. Crimson Gold was the well-deserved winner of the prestigious Prix du Un Certain Regard at last year's Cannes Film Festival.
Perhaps the most audacious move of this year's Cine-World is its decision to present all five parts of Matthew Barney's controversial Cremaster Cycle, an enigmatic and resolutely avant-garde epic that's been called everything from the greatest work of art of modern times to an obtuse bore. Personally, I find the cycle to be something of a mixed bag, but, altogether, thoroughly fascinating. If you choose to get your feet wet by checking out just one installment, make it the visually spectacular Cremaster 3, with the lushly operatic Cremaster 5 (featuring a barely recognizable Ursula Andress!) a close second choice.
With documentaries such as Spellbound and Capturing the Friedmans all the rage this year, Cine-World 2003 tips its hat to the form with a program called "Real on Reel." Highlights include Ted Demme's look at '70s cinema, A Decade Under the Influence, brother Jonathan Demme's The Agronomist, and AfroPunk, a look at African-American kids forging a whole new underground music scene. There are docs here on just about everything from modern Tibet to Atlantic Records' legendary engineer Tom Dowd, to the political mess in Venezuela, to Yves St. Laurent.
There's much more going on at Cine-World — too much to cover in just a single column — so we'll encourage you to check out the complete schedule at the festival's website at www.filmsociety.org/cine.htm (tickets can be ordered online as well). An event like Cine-World is tailor-made for exploring, and, as usual, the most rewarding discoveries are bound to be the ones you figure out all by yourself.
Single tickets are $6.50 ($5.50 for Sarasota Film Society members), and discount passes for 12 or more films are available as well. Burns Court is located at 506 Burns Lane in downtown Sarasota. For more information, call 941-364-8662 ext. 23.
Film Critic Lance Goldenberg can be reached at lgoldenb@tampabay.rr.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 157.
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2003.