Favorite Plotline in the film [i]Love Actually[/i]

You know I am full Stockholm-syn on this dark monument that I will be forced to watch and interpret and decode and rewatch and reinterpret and recode and rebuild for the rest of my life but About Time is a straight piece of shit.

I think I was blinded by love for Colin Firth when I decided his creepy pursuit of a woman he'd never spoken to was cute.

Give Moniz agency! She’s in too!

the linking woof mentions i can forgive- richard curtis and all like him know only those fifty people from college or work upon whom they rely for getting gigs like richard curtis has

Yup yup I get where his attention goes based on background - successful politician, director of ad agency, man with a very particular set of skills - but I felt myself noticing that Freeman and Marshall were basically badly attached sketches this time out.

Oh, the Tall Guy is actually not a bad film by Curtis. It predates all this dreck by several years and features Jeff Goldblum doing a stage musical of the Elephant Man called "Elephant!" (I haven't seen this in over 30 years so it might be terrible actually)

So as I try to summarise it in my head L,A is basically the real people have interesting dramas and aren’t the other smaller people funny and charming. Art (Bill Nighy) exists in a disturbing liminal space which is neither one nor the other but provides a background texture that eventually collapses into a queer/porn space which the film turns away from.

I think Linney complicates that - she's not an important successful man, but the film cares about what happens to her.

Oh, the Tall Guy is actually not a bad film by Curtis. It predates all this dreck by several years and features Jeff Goldblum doing a stage musical of the Elephant Man called "Elephant!" (I haven't seen this in over 30 years so it might be terrible actually)

about time is maybe the creepiest film ever made. change my mind

look i know it was in november but

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Wednesday, December 27, 2023 2:10 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was fantastic

Oh I’d never noticed till this watch that the Firth/Moniz plot is not set in Portugal - it’s Marseilles/South of France. Like there’s some particular freedom of movement/migrant labour thing going on that I can’t unpick.

France, along with Switzerland, has traditionally been the main target of immigration for ppl from the Portuguese mainland - especially during the dictatorship, when it offered working class people a better chance at escaping poverty and political dissenters a safe space. If it had been set in Portugal the idea of Moniz speaking zero English would've been too ludicrous for words - a second gen immigrant living in France I can accept, though she would speak fluent French and her Portuguese would probably be a lot less good than it is in the film.

Portuguese men also 100% do not kiss each other ever, I had to unlearn this toxic masculinity kissing my French relatives on the cheeks.