Summary
We see images of people greeting one another happily at an airport. In voiceover, a man says that whenever he gets sad about the state of the world, he thinks about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. Love is everywhere, he suggests, even if just in small and un-noteworthy ways. "If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling that love actually is all around."
The scene shifts and an aging rockstar, Billy Mack, is recording a Christmas version of the Troggs' song "Love is All Around." He keeps getting the lyrics wrong; mistakenly singing "Love is all around me" instead of "Christmas is all around me," and his manager, Joe, keeps stopping him and reminding him to sing it correctly. In the middle of recording it correctly, Billy comments on the fact that the song is "shit," and Joe tells him, "Yep, solid gold shit, maestro."
It is five weeks until Christmas and we see Jamie, a writer, is late for something. As he rushes out the door, he wishes his sick girlfriend goodbye lovingly.
We then see a widower, Daniel, sitting at his desk and calling his friend, Karen. She tells him she has to call him back, but that she is there for him. When she hangs up, Karen's daughter tells her that she has been cast as the lobster in the school nativity play.
John and Judy are stand-ins for films, and are shooting a sex scene. When the director yells cut, the two of them introduce themselves and flirt a bit.
We then see Peter preparing for his wedding to Juliet. He and his best man, Mark, wait at the front of the church, as Peter ensures that Mark hasn't prepared any surprises, like the Brazilian prostitutes he hired for his "stag night," who all turned out to be men. Juliet walks down the aisle.
David, the new prime minister of England, arrives for his first day. He meets his staff, including Terence, the head of staff, Pat, the housekeeper, and Natalie, his secretary, who is also new. She accidentally calls him David, and curses in front of him, but he is charmed by her lack of polish. As he walks away, David looks back at Natalie, clearly attracted to her.
Peter and Juliet are married, and Peter is surprised that his best man, Mark, has resisted the temptation to surprise them in some way. We see Jamie in the congregation, clapping for the newlyweds as they walk down the aisle. Suddenly, a choir appears in the choir loft, along with a well-known singer. They sing "All You Need is Love," a surprise arranged by Mark.
Jamie returns home after the wedding to find his brother in his apartment. The brother tells him that he's there to borrow some CDs, and Jamie discusses the fact that he thinks they ought to take their mother out for her birthday, when they are interrupted by Jamie's girlfriend yelling, "Hurry up, big boy. I'm naked and I want you at least twice before Jamie gets home."
At the wedding reception, a caterer, Colin, tries to hit on a woman, Nancy. After he insults the food, Colin discovers, much to his embarrassment, that Nancy is the chef. He goes to the backroom and talks to his friend, Tony, about the fact that English girls are stuck up and he ought to go to America to find a girlfriend. "Colin, you're a lonely, ugly arsehole and you must accept it," Tony says.
The scene shifts and we see that Tony is working on the movie that Judy and John are stand-ins for. Tony asks Judy to take her top off for the next shot, and John tells Judy about being a stand-in for Brad Pitt on Seven Years in Tibet. They are interrupted by Tony telling John to put his hands on Judy's breasts and massage them for filming.
At the funeral for Daniel's wife, Daniel speaks about the fact that he and his wife had a lot of time to discuss her funeral arrangements, the fact that they joked about him bringing Claudia Schiffer as his date. He introduces a slideshow set to the song "Bye Bye Baby" by the Bay City Rollers.
The scene shifts to the wedding, where the same song is playing. Mark, looking sad, watches Peter and Juliet dancing, when a woman, Sarah, pulls her chair up alongside him and asks if he is in love with Peter. He tells her he is not, before commenting on the fact that the DJ is bad.
Mia, a secretary, goes into her boss Harry's office to tell him that Sarah is coming to speak with him. Sarah sits down and Harry asks her how long she's been working there. When she tells him she's been there for 2 years, he asks her how long she's been in love with Karl, their "enigmatic chief designer." She is taken aback, but then tells him that she's loved him almost as long as she's been working there.
Harry advises Sarah to invite Karl for a drink. "Think about it, for all our sake's. It's Christmas," he says. As she goes to leave, Karl comes into Harry's office.
Billy Mack gets interviewed on the radio about his new single. "When I was young and successful, I was greedy and foolish, and now I'm left with no one, wrinkled and alone," Billy says to the interviewer, talking about the fact that he doesn't feel connected to Christmas.
The interviewer is refreshed by Billy's honesty and asks him what his best "shag" ever has been. "Britney Spears," says Billy, without missing a beat. He then candidly says that he thinks the record is terrible, but suggests that it might be beautiful if the number one Christmas recording was made by "an old ex-heroin-addict searching for a comeback at any price."
It's four weeks til Christmas. The prime minister, David, wants to cooperate with the president of America, as America is the most powerful country in the world. Later, Natalie brings him some correspondence and a plate of cookies, and tells him that she was hoping he would win.
The scene shifts to John and Judy, fully nude, with Judy sitting on top of John simulating sex. They are discussing the prime minister, and the fact that he isn't married. As they simulate sex, John tells Judy that it's a pleasure getting to work with someone who is nice to talk to.
Colin tells Tony that he's headed to Wisconsin in the next week. "You know that any bar in America contains 10 girls more beautiful and more likely to have sex with me than the whole of the United Kingdom," Colin says to his doubting friend.
Harry discusses the office holiday party with his seductive secretary, Mia. When the subject of significant others comes up, Mia tells Harry that she will be hanging around the mistletoe, hoping to be kissed.
Analysis
From the start of the film, a voiceover narrator lays out the thematic center of the film. As we see footage of people arriving at an airport and hugging their loved ones, a man whom we later learn to be the prime minister of England talks about the fact that we are surrounded by love all the time, that love can be found in all circumstances. Before we know anything about the characters or the plot of the film, the viewer knows that the film will concern the ubiquity of love and its positive effects on the world. In its straightforwardness and claims to universality, the film's premise is a simple but compelling one that promises to draw the viewer in and inspire them.
The story of the film is not one unified narrative, but a number of different narratives taking place simultaneously. We get flashes of each, which creates a fragmented, episodic structure. All the stories are united by the fact that they are taking place in London in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and by the fact that they concern different stories of love in all its forms. The structure is a tapestry of different narratives and vignettes, with no single protagonist or antagonist, and no unified conflict.
The tone of the film is brisk and humorous. After the initial sentimentality of the first moment, the introduction of each character is treated with irreverent good humor. While the characters are all faced with the burdens of real life—grief, loss, infidelity, pressure at work, unrequited attraction—their attitudes are often quippy and humorous. The humor of the film is distinctly British: often self-deprecating, cheekily irreverent, suggestive, or satirical in nature. Taboo topics are treated with alternating gravity and drollness.
The film often uses juxtapositions to tell its fragmented story. A moment of humor transitions into a moment of sadness and sobriety, and vice versa. The instance in which Jamie realizes his wife is having an affair is played for humor, and quickly transitions into a humorous scene of Colin unsuccessfully hitting on a woman. The song "Bye Bye Baby" plays at the funeral of Daniel's wife, and then plays at the wedding of Peter and Juliet. These quick transitions between very different moods and kinds of scenarios are meant to highlight the multiplicity of existence, that life is filled with a diverse range of experiences that are all happening at any given moment.
In this first section of the film, we can begin to see the ways that all of the different sections fit together, but we don't yet see the whole picture. Certain characters that appear in other scenes show up at the wedding, or the funeral, and we get the sense that the character list is a contained web, though it is not entirely clear how it all connects.
