Love Actually
Love Actually is a 2003 Christmas romantic comedy film written and directed by Richard Curtis. It features an ensemble cast, composed predominantly of British actors, many of whom had worked with Curtis in previous film and television projects. Mostly filmed on location in London, the screenplay delves into different aspects of love as shown through 10 separate stories involving a variety of individuals, many of whom are shown to be interlinked as the plot progresses. The story begins five weeks before Christmas and is played out in a weekly countdown until the holiday, followed by an epilogue that takes place one month later.
Love Actually
A voiceover opens the film, commenting that whenever he gets gloomy about the state of the world, he thinks of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport, about the pure uncomplicated love of friends and families welcoming their loved ones. He also points out that the messages from the 9/11 victims were messages of love and not hate. The story then switches between the interconnecting "love stories" of many people:
Juliet and Peter's wedding is videotaped by the best man, Mark, where a surprise band plays the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" as they walk out of the church. Although the couple believe Mark dislikes Juliet, he is actually in love with her. When he evades her requests to see the video he shot at the wedding, she shows up at his flat. Juliet insists she wants them to be friends, but when she views the wedding video Mark recorded, she sees many extreme close-ups of herself and few of Peter's face. She realises Mark's true feelings towards her. After an uncomfortable silence, Mark blurts out that he acts cold out of "self-preservation".
On Christmas Eve, Juliet answers the doorbell to find Mark carrying a boombox playing a Christmas carol and large cue cards. While Peter is inside watching television, Mark tells a message of his love to Juliet through the cue cards. As he walks away down the street, Juliet runs after him, gives him a quick kiss and returns inside.
Jamie returns to England, realises he is in love with Aurélia and begins learning Portuguese. He returns to France to find her and ends up walking through town with her father and sister, gathering additional people as they walk to her waitressing job. In basic, and often grammatically incorrect Portuguese, he declares his love for her and proposes. She says yes in broken English, showing she too had been studying English "just in cases", as the crowd erupts in applause.
Sarah first appears at Juliet and Peter's wedding, sitting next to her friend Jamie. An American working at Harry's graphic design company, she is in love with the creative director, Karl. Prompted by Harry, they finally connect at the Christmas party and Karl drives her home. Michael, her mentally ill brother, telephones from a psychiatric hospital, aborting their tryst. On Christmas Eve they are both working late. Karl tries to find words but just wishes her a merry Christmas and leaves. In tears, Sarah calls Michael and visits him to give him a Christmas gift.
John and Judy are professional stand-ins for films. They meet doing the sex scenes for a film for which Tony is a production assistant. John tells Judy that "It's lovely to find someone [he] can actually chat to." While they are perfectly comfortable being naked and simulating sex on-set, they are shy and tentative off-set. They carefully pursue a relationship, attending the Christmas pageant (involving David and Natalie, Harry and Karen's children, Daniel and Sam, etc.) at the local school with John's brother. They get engaged by the end of the film.
All the stories are linked in some way; while Billy Mack and his manager may not connect with any of the other characters physically, Billy appears frequently on characters' radios and TVs, his music video twice providing an important plot device for Sam's pursuit of Joanna, and they also cross paths with the other characters in the closing Heathrow scene. John and Judy work with Tony, who is best friends with Colin, who works for a catering company that services the office where Sarah, Karl, Mia and Harry work. Mia is friends with Mark, who runs the art gallery where the Christmas office party takes place. Mia also lives next door to Natalie. Mark is in love with Juliet and friends with Peter. The couple is friends with Jamie and Sarah. Harry is married to Karen, who is friends with Daniel and her brother is David, who works with Natalie. Harry and Karen's children (and thus David's niece and nephew), Natalie's siblings (and thus Mia's neighbours) and Carol's son are all schoolmates of Sam and Joanna. An additional plot that was dropped in editing concerned the children's headmistress (Anne Reid) and her dying lesbian partner (Frances de la Tour).[7]
Initially, Curtis started writing with two distinct and separate films in mind, each featuring expanded versions of what would eventually become storylines in Love Actually: those featuring Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.[8] He changed tack, however, having become frustrated with the process.[9] Partly inspired by the films of Robert Altman as well as films such as Pulp Fiction, and inspired by Curtis having become "more interested in writing a film about love and what love sort of means" he had the idea of creating an ensemble film.[9] The film initially did not have any sort of Christmas theme, although Curtis's penchant for such films eventually caused him to write it as one.[10]
Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice called it "love British style, handicapped slightly by corny circumstance and populated by colorful neurotics".[38] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half out of four stars, describing it as "a belly-flop into the sea of romantic comedy ... The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs, until at times Curtis seems to be working from a checklist of obligatory movie love situations and doesn't want to leave anything out ... It feels a little like a gourmet meal that turns into a hot-dog eating contest."[39]
In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers rated it two stars out of a possible four, saying "there are laughs laced with feeling here, but the deft screenwriter Richard Curtis dilutes the impact by tossing in more and more stories. As a director ... Curtis can't seem to rein in his writer. ... He ladles sugar over the eager-to-please Love Actually to make it go down easy, forgetting that sometimes it just makes you gag."[45] Christopher Orr of The Atlantic was negative toward the work and described it as the least romantic movie of all time, considering its ultimate message to be "It's probably best if you give up on love altogether and get on with the rest of your life."[46][47]
can we please fire the poster designer because, as someone who had not seen this before, was honestly expecting hugh grant to get with liam neeson, keira knightley to find love with martine mckutcheon and bill nighy to fall for rowan atkinson. needless to say i was baited your honour
Scientists in fields ranging from anthropology to neuroscience have been asking this same question (albeit less eloquently) for decades. It turns out the science behind love is both simpler and more complex than we might think.
According to a team of scientists led by Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers, romantic love can be broken down into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment. Each category is characterized by its own set of hormones stemming from the brain (Table 1).
Is there drugs out there, that can block these chemicals so that we can never be attracted & attached to a significant other, therefore we can never be hurt by love and stay content and happy as a single free human?
I can speak from personal experience about what George is saying. I was taking an ADD medication called Dexedrine. One of the effects of Dexedrine is that it boosts dopamine levels. It had lots of very harmful side-effects. Coincidentally this was around the same time that I was falling in love with someone, and I can tell you the experience was at least 10 times worse for everyone because of the medication.
I loved the article but I would love if an explanation was given on how the brain is involved to regulate the three parts of love , attraction, lust, and attachment, I mean what is the controlling chemical for the free will?
Excellent research. As a marketing manager, I can say that love and passion can be very effective sales tools. And here all this is explained from the point of view of chemistry and biology. Thank you for the work done.
Reading this article made me know a lot more about love in the scientific aspect of it. It is good to know the different factors that affect our emotions when we feel love. As it is stated in the article, love is something that we need to formulate. We need to find balance in everything because too much of something is not good for us. Balance our emotions to be able to express our love more genuinely. But love is not always about the good explosion of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. There will always be pain. Love will let us feel pain to wake up our senses and know our worth and know where to limit ourselves.
Are the chemical reactions a response to maturation i.e., does a child react the same as an adult? If not does it not suggest that the release of chemical triggering romantic love is a behavioral response? Also, what can be expected of a parentless child raised in an institution by indifferent caretakers until the age of 21? Where is the attachment (bonding)? How would this deprivation affect meaningful relationships and intimacy as an adult?
Most likely, your heart was pounding in your chest. It is hardly surprising that, for centuries, people believed that love and most other emotions originated in the heart. As it turns out, love is all about the brain, which causes the rest of the body to go bonkers. 041b061a72