Holiday Romances

The Holiday

Remember the Night

Ho ho howdy, dear reader! Happy holidays and happy last night of Hanukkah! I hope this chilly (but still humid somehow) weather is treating you well, and I hope that you’re protecting your peace and sanity as much as humanly possible during this stressful human holiday season. I like the holidays as much and as little as the next person, but when it comes to holiday movies, there are very few that I haven’t seen, and there are very few that I have any interest in watching. Last year I basically dedicated the entire month of December to holiday movies—I even managed to find a rare Hanukkah movie somehow—but this year I think I’ll be more than satisfied with just two holiday double features. So lets kick things off with my least favorite—and the most common—of holiday movie genres: holiday romances. I only declare this holiday genre to be my least favorite because there is an over-saturation of romances and romantic comedies set during Christmas, and many of them are twee, tedious, and unfortunately tragic. Love Actually, Christmas in Connecticut, Four Christmases, Meet Me in St. Louis, Just Friends, Serendipity, The Family Stone, The Last Holiday, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and Babes in Toyland are all Christmas romances, and even Christmas movies that don’t revolve around romances often still feature a romance at its core like Scrooged, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Elf, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Apartment, and Miracle on 34th Street. And too many of these holiday romances are tragedies! Last Christmas, Carol, An Affair to Remember, Stepmom, Silent Night Lonely Night, and, I’ll say just it: Bad Santa. Perhaps the most depressing of all. I’m not trying to be a Grinch, in fact, I’m trying to avoid these tragic Christmas movies so I can prevent myself from becoming a seasonal affective grinch. So I went on the hunt for holiday romances that hold the tragedy and keep the cuteness, and I was mostly successful! Mostly. Up first is a favorite from a favorite rom-com filmmaker: Nancy Meyers’ 2006 film The Holiday. I vividly remember watching the trailer for this movie at ten years old, gazing in slack-jawed awe at the hotness of Jude Law, the easy charm of Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, and being pleasantly surprised that Jack Black was in it at all. I have personally always had a crush on Jack Black, but rarely is he afforded the kind of romantic lead roles that someone like his costar Jude Law would typically inhabit, which I take great issue with. He has effortless chemistry with Joan Cusack in School of Rock, and with her brother John in High Fidelity, because he just can’t help being the most charismatic—and musically adept—one in the room, and his turn in The Holiday was no different. The Holiday follows two women, Iris (Winslet) and Amanda (Diaz) who have both been unlucky in love. Shocker. Iris is a journalist living in the UK who specifically covers weddings (go figure) and has been having a maddening will-they-won’t-they thing with her dashing male coworker for three years, until she learns she’ll be reporting on this very man’s upcoming marriage—to a different coworker of theirs. Amanda is a movie trailer editor living in LA who discovers that her boyfriend has been cheating on her, causing her to desperately want a vacation. Amanda looks on the world wide web, on some early form of Airbnb, and discovers a cozy little cottage in England that seems just far enough away from her troubles. It would turn out that this is Iris’ cozy little cottage, and that she, too is desperate to get out of her bubble, so the women hatch a plan to swap houses for the impending Winter break—so that if they must spend Christmas alone, at least it will be on their terms. Amanda arrives at a snowy, isolated fairytale cottage and learns to adjust to driving on the wrong side of the road, and Iris arrives at a sunny, Los Angeles mansion, and learns to adapt to the warmer weather and the complicated DVD player. The two women are out of their comfort zones, but it doesn’t take long for them to make friends—enter Jude Law and Jack Black, Iris’ neighboring brother and Amanda’s neighboring film composer, respectively. Graham (Law) shows up at his sister Iris’ house drunk, as he does on many nights, but instead finds Amanda. And Miles (Black) drops by Amanda’s place to pick up some things from her musician ex-boyfriend who is no longer there, and instead finds Iris. Both couples respectively go through their own ups and downs, will theys and won’t theys, and eventually do find that they love each other—despite Amanda boldly making the claim to Graham post-sexual encounter that she won’t fall in love with him. Amanda is constantly saying this, and she is also constantly apologizing for being a mess, even though she is painfully normal and abysmally put-together. The same could be said for Iris, who is constantly apologizing for similar reasons to Miles, and her elderly legendary former filmmaker neighbor-for-the-month, Arthur (Eli Wallach.) Amanda settles into her new English lifestyle, perpetually wearing soft sweaters and drinking a cup of tea, and in general, just slowing down the way she needed to. And Iris learns to be more outgoing, more confident, and less controlled by this former office lover of hers. They all, men included, do some necessary growing and learning, and along the way form truly spontaneous and fulfilling relationships and friendships—the way we all wish they would occur. The Holiday is consistently sweet, if not a bit long-winded. This film is over two hours long, which, even in its most romantic and lovable moments, felt highly unnecessary. And while there were a handful of other unnecessary moments (exes being dead and Jack Black getting his heart broken, just to name a couple) The Holiday felt like a successful holiday romance because it was just the right amount of cheesy, and just the right amount of stupid. Of course I would’ve loved if it were funnier, but seeing Cameron Diaz jam out to The Killers and Jack Black do musical impressions of different movies inside of a Blockbuster really satisfied me with nostalgia. Not to mention that it’s always a good time to look at Jude Law’s face as he asks “how do you feel about foreplay?” Structurally, it’s a bit all over the place—we begin with Kate Winslet narrating and then never hear her internal voice again, for example—but this is to be expected with a film that intends to be a British romance, an American comedy, a travel movie, and a Jack Black charm vehicle all-in-one. It didn’t quite make me blush, but The Holiday did put a nostalgic smile on my face, and it did make me want to rewatch Bridget Jones’ Diary. Next, I watched an old, and I do mean old, classic from 1940, Mitchell Leisen’s Remember the Night. Remember the Night, written by Preston Sturges, is the first of four cinematic collaborations between Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, and follows a young and beautiful shoplifter named Lee (Stanwyck) and a cocky New York state prosecutor named John (MacMurray.) These actors are perhaps best known for their noir classic, Double Indemnity, but in Remember the Night, we meet Stanwyck just as she is caught for swiping jewelry, and just as MacMurray is about to prosecute her. This all takes place right before Christmas and John, the hot-shot assistant district attorney, is able to get the trial postponed til after the holidays. Lee obviously doesn’t want to spend the Christmas holiday in jail, and John feels guilty, so he asks bondsman “Fat Mike” to post bail. “Fat Mike” incorrectly assumes that John intends to seduce Lee, so he ends up dropping Lee off at John’s apartment. Before John can react, he is stuck with this dazzling thief in his home, just before he’s set to go visit his family back home in Indiana. When John learns that Lee is also a Hoosier, he suggests that she ride with him home, and he can drop her off at the home she ran away from years ago. What could go wrong! Of course, a bevy of hijinks ensue, and this reluctant couple must work together to make it home (in one piece) to Indiana. Along their journey they encounter hillbillies and not-so-accidental house fires, and John learns to rely upon Lee’s strongly-established street smarts just as much as she learns to appreciate the stability that John and his family provide. When watching any movie from the early twentieth century, there’s always the concern that the humor won’t hold up or that it will be hard to follow or understand, but there was no concern needed here. Remember the Night is laugh-out-loud funny, as each and every character can’t help but quip their way through conversations, and it’s believably romantic—despite its unbelievably silly premise. Poor Fred MacMurray was never hot, not even when he was young like he was here, but Barbara Stanwyck is reliably, glamorously gorgeous, and truthfully so funny. When the two arrive at John’s house and are greeted by his mom, aunt, and gay cousin Willie (they never said he was gay but they never needed to), the rom part of this rom-com really kicks into high gear, because everyone around John and Lee can feel the palpable animal magnetism between them. Their romance builds as naturally as one can between a prosecutor and a career shoplifter, but when the holiday ends and it’s time to go back to reality, their love is still in tact—but so is Lee’s trial. I shan’t spoil the exact details of the ending, but I will say that Remember the Night ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and with a shocking amount of solemnity for such an otherwise fun movie. I have no idea why the filmmakers decided to end the film this way, nor do I understand why it is called “Remember the Night” when the events of this movie take place over the course of several days, told in real time and not in a flashbacking, remembering kind of way. Regardless of my confusion, I still enjoyed Remember the Night, in all of its silly, Christmassy, tough 1940s grit and glory. And even though I would’ve preferred a neat ending all tied up in a Christmas bow, it’s probably more plausible for any love story—Christmas or otherwise—to face predicaments before they settle peacefully. Well, that’s about all of the holiday romance that this single girl can stomach this year, but I thank you for reading along this week, and I hope this holiday season is everything you wish it to be. Now that we’ve got the lovey-dovey holiday movies out of the way, we can focus on an entirely different holiday flavor next week. 👀 Until then, stay warm and fuzzy!