It’s one of the best romantic comedies of all time: its director considers it problematic today

Released in theaters on December 3, 2003, Love Actually by Richard Curtis celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. For the occasion, the Christmas romantic comedy is being released this Tuesday, December 5 only in our cinemas. The film is also being released in UHD, Blu-ray & DVD and digital editions.

With a budget of $40 million, this ensemble film which follows the stories of love and disenchantment of 8 couples grossed nearly $245 million at the international box office and has today acquired the status of a cult film. .

This is the first production of New Zealand-British filmmaker Richard Curtis, previously known for the screenplays of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love at First Sight in Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Led by Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln, Martine McCutcheon, the late Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Laura Linney, Martin Freeman, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Rodrigo Santoro and Lúcia Moniz, the film is a must-see for the holiday season.

Its soundtrack is made up of hits from Justin Timberlake, Joni Mitchell, Dido, Maroon 5, Sugababes, Otis Redding and Norah Jones, not forgetting the cover of Mariah Carey’s Christmas hit All I Want For Christmas Is You by the young Olivia Olson, and several of its sequences have now become an integral part of popular culture.

Impossible, when we talk about Love Actually, not to immediately think of the scene of Mark’s (Andrew Lincoln) declaration to Juliet (Keira Knightley), the wife of his best friend (Chiwetel Ejiofor). However, this scene almost never saw the light of day and even its director considers it problematic today.

Andrew Lincoln was against the placard scene

For this extremely famous sequence, Richard Curtis was inspired by a declaration of love he himself made years earlier and by Bob Dylan’s music video Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965) in which the singer parades signs to the rhythm of the lyrics.

During the filming of Love Actually, the scene was the subject of much discussion. Andrew Lincoln thought this sequence made him seem like an unhealthy guy. The actor explained on the microphone of Entertainment Weekly in 2017:

“The scene was easy to perform, I just had to parade signs that I had written myself and pretend to be in love with Keira Knightley, which isn’t very difficult. But I kept telling Richard that I felt like I was creepy.”

However, the director manages to convince the young actor and the result is one of the most striking declarations of love in cinema.

Peter Mountain

Years later, the director admitted that in hindsight, Andrew Lincoln was right: “Today I am aware that Mark’s role would be seen as a harasser. But fortunately, thanks to his sincere and candid acting, we find him more touching than mean..”

The English site The Independent reveals that last September, one of the scripts for Love Actually was auctioned off at a charity sale in aid of the Good Chance Theater in east London, which supports refugee artists. The document presented annotations by Richard Curtis already hinting at doubts about the sign scene.

We can read there: “I came up with four things Mark could do for his big moment. The office workers chose their favorite action and I opted for this one. I wonder if we will regret this choice”. The filmmaker therefore already had doubts about the sequence before shooting it.

The interpreter of Rick in The Walking Dead for his part today takes an amused look at his character and specifies EW : “In one of the most romantic films that exists, I play the role of the only guy who can’t seduce the girl he loves.

The film shows different ways of loving, for me it’s unrequited love and as a result I come across as the old street harasser.“

Peter Mountain

A grossophobic film?

But this sequence is not the only one to pose a problem today. Last October, while at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Richard Curtis spoke about the grossophobic jokes in Love Actually.

In the feature film, the character of Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), the secretary of David, the prime minister played by Hugh Grant, is often mocked for her weight. While her father calls her “plump” and one of her colleagues notes that she “dyour huge thighs“, David says to him: “My God, you weigh one of these weights” when she jumps into his arms.

Love Actually on TF1: but what happened to Martine McCutcheon, who played Hugh Grant’s secretary?

The site Today reports the filmmaker’s words as follows: “5 years ago, my daughter Scarlett said to me, “You can never use the word ‘fat’ again.” And it shocked me at first, but she was right. Those jokes aren’t funny anymore. .I wasn’t malicious at the time, but I think I wasn’t as attentive and intelligent as I should have been.“

Peter Mountain

Then asked about the lack of diversity in his films, the filmmaker also made his mea culpa: “I come from a very undiverse school and a group of university friends. In Notting Hill, I think the reason I didn’t address the issue of diversity was because I thought I didn’t know how to write about it.

I think I was stupid, I was wrong. My producers, my casting director and I just didn’t think about it. We weren’t open enough.”

On the more specific subject of Love Actually, Curtis says: “There are things that we would change but, thank God, society evolves, and my film will therefore, at a certain point, be outdated.“

Love Actually Despite everything, it remains a cult comedy thanks to its British humor, its soundtrack and its characters, each as endearing as the next. The film can be seen again in cinemas in a restored version this Tuesday, December 5.