“Love Actually” sucks indeed, both as that horrendous film directed by Richard Curtis from 2003, and as a real life experience that barely any of us was spared of. In the case of Scud's drama from 2011, there is also a third, literal interpretation of the title that is very nicely explained in a wedding video screened right at the beginning of the film. The wedding celebration that goes terribly wrong is a place where all film's protagonists who will later on indulge in different types of relationships, are gathered. We recognize their faces one by one as the story unfolds.
Love Actually…Sucks! is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam
A middle aged fitness instructor (John Tai) takes fancy at his much younger class participant who happens to be cruising at the same places as him. The young man does agree to pose model for the fitness trainer who turns out to be a talented painter as well, but he finds him a dash too old for something more. The trainer and his crush are just two of many characters who are seeking love at all costs.
In “Love actually…sucks!” there are more marble arses than in the British museum. The naked flesh that we are used to see in Scud's films is put in another kind of context that explores the right to love, and the frames of a sexual relationship. Stalking, rape, incest, self-entitlement, closeted identity, betrayal, it's all given in an intricate story that connects many destinies together.
Scud's way of approaching sexuality differs from those directed by authors who use soft pornography for the sole purpose of making the audiences sexualy aroused. His movies abstain from polished cosmetics and artificially ‘hot' dialogues. What is said has almost the same quality of what we say and hear in real life, and things that aren't said are felt as authentic. In “Love Actually…Sucks!” the sense of shame is gone, but the feeling of guilt is omnipresent
There is a crime element involved, and it represents the film's most poignant warning that one should take the red flags seriously, and that obsession with someone without that other person's feelings involved can lead to a tragic outcome. We observe the first signs of awkwardness between two lovers, and the woman's helplessness in face of her estranged boyfriend's insistence on their time spent together. When she reports him to the police for rape, he comes back at her with a terrible revenge.
Scud's take on relationships in his fourth feature that is part of the retrospective of his work at Rotterdam International Film Festival is simple in concept, but nonetheless complex in its execution. It is about choices, those who come from heart, and those that come from passion, and none of them in case of “Love Actually…Sucks!” are conventional. The director is mastering the art of unexpected twists, and the change of mood from blissful or relaxed to gloomy. This is particularly visible in the movie's first 10 minutes during which a festive, cheerful celebration of love turns into its fall into the abyss.
