Summary
Karen goes over to Daniel's house, and he tells her about his stepson, Sam, the 11-year-old child of his late wife, who spends all his time in his room. He tells her that Sam's mother used to be the one to talk to him, but he doesn't know how. Daniel begins to cry, and Karen responds, "People hate sissies. No one's ever gonna shag you if you cry all the time." He sarcastically says, "Helpful," and they both reach into a box of Frosted Flakes.
Daniel goes and sits with Sam next to the Thames to talk with him. He asks Sam if he's being bullied or if it's something very serious, and Sam tells him that he's in love with a girl at school. Daniel is relieved that it's not something more serious.
We see Sarah sitting at her desk at the end of the day, as Karl turns off the lights and goes to leave. She says goodnight to Karl, but cannot muster the courage to ask him out, frustrated with herself. She receives a call from someone who seems to want to vent.
Jamie, recently cheated on by his girlfriend, goes to France to a small cottage to write.
One day, when Natalie delivers some mail for David, he asks her about herself. She tells him she lives in the "dodgy end" of Wandsworth, and he tells her that his sister lives there also. She then tells him she just broke up with her boyfriend, who called her fat, and is living with her mother and father. As she leaves, David jokes that he can have her ex-boyfriend murdered if she wants, and she laughs.
At home, Daniel and Sam strategize about how Sam can profess his love to his crush. "Basically you're fucked, aren't you?" Daniel says, laughing.
The scene shifts to Billy on a television show promoting his new record. He discusses the fact that members of the boy band Blue were not very nice about his record when they were on the show the previous week. Billy takes out the prize for a competition they are hosting: a felt tip pen. He uses the pen to write on a poster of Blue, making a speech bubble to make them say, "We've got little pricks."
When the hosts advise Billy that there are kids watching at home, Billy addresses the children watching at home directly saying, "Don't buy drugs. Become a popstar and they give you them for free."
Three weeks to Christmas. Mark works at a gallery where a number of nudes are hanging. He talks to Peter on the phone, when Peter puts Juliet on the phone to talk to him. When she gets on, she tells him the wedding videos came out poorly and she wants to look at the footage he took. Mark isn't so sure, but agrees to take a look at his footage.
At the office, Harry talks to Sarah about Karl. He taunts her about it as her cellphone begins to ring. Harry walks over to Mia who tells him she's found a venue for the holiday party, an art gallery her friend runs. When she suggests that it's "full of dark corners for doing dark deeds," and opens her legs, Harry excuses himself bashfully.
In France, Jamie writes, when he is interrupted by a caretaker who introduces him to the woman who will be cleaning his house, a Portuguese woman named Aurelia. Jamie tries to speak Portuguese, but fails, before inviting Aurelia inside. The scene shifts to later, when Jamie is driving Aurelia home. He tries to make conversation, but it is difficult.
The American president visits the prime minister. As he enters the prime minister's house, the president makes eyes at Natalie and talks with David privately about how sexy he finds Natalie. In a meeting, the president and the prime minister struggle to reach an agreement, and the president is stubborn in his convictions.
When David goes to fetch a file and comes back into the room, he finds the president whispering something in Natalie's ear, and she hurries out of the room. The president and the prime minister attend a press conference to discuss their meetings. While the president makes it seem as though the meetings have gone smoothly, David contends that the American president is being a bully and insisting on measures with which the English representatives do not agree. "We may be a small country, but we're a great one too. The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, David Beckham's right foot, David Beckham's left foot, come to that," he says, to the amusement of those assembled. When he says that he is prepared to stand up to the bullying of America, the room erupts with flashbulbs of photographers and furious questioning.
Later, David receives a call from his sister, who turns out to be Karen. When he hangs up on her, she looks over at her husband, who turns out to be Harry, and talks about the fact that being the prime minister's sister makes her accomplishments seem very small in comparison. She tells him she made a papier-mache lobster head as he asks what they're listening to. "Joni Mitchell," Karen says, "I love her, and true love lasts a lifetime. Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel."
At home, David undresses and listens to the radio, which plays "Jump (For My Love)" by the Pointer Sisters. As the song escalates, he dances around his home excitedly. In the midst of his dancing, he sees Mary, one of his prim assistants, and tries to play it off like he hasn't been dancing.
Two weeks to Christmas. Jamie offers Aurelia some sweets, and they speak to one another in different languages, completely unable to understand one another. Later, as he writes outside, Aurelia brings Jamie some tea. When she picks up his old mug, his papers go flying into the pond nearby. She jumps into the water to collect the pages and he runs after her. They chatter away in the process, with Aurelia saying, "I don't want to drown saving some shit my grandmother could have written."
Later, they sit inside and drink tea. In Portuguese, Aurelia suggests that he give her 50% of the profits, and he tells her he could give her 5%, but neither can understand each other. They try and communicate, and he tells her that his book is a murder crime novel. When she tells him she'll need a ride later, he tells her, "It's my favorite time of day, driving you," but she does not understand. "It's the saddest part of my day, leaving you," she says, but he does not understand her either.
Juliet visits Mark's apartment unexpectedly with pie and asks to see the video, but he tells her he doesn't know where it is. She tells him that she hopes they can become friends, even though they haven't gotten off to a very good start. Suddenly, she finds the tape without having to look very hard and pops it in the television.
Analysis
In the midst of the lighter moments in the film, there are moments of great gravity and sorrow. When Karen goes over to Daniel's house, he confides in her about his inability to communicate with his stepson, Sam, and breaks down crying from his sense of helplessness. In this moment, she gives him a hard time, but we see that their relationship is loving, one in which he can be himself in front of his old friend. In this storyline, love is not simply a vitalizing agent or something that lightens the mood, but something that can help a grieving widower survive.
Perhaps the most comic character in the film is Billy Mack, the aging rocker who is barely holding onto his sanity while promoting a new album in hopes of making a comeback. Played dryly by Bill Nighy, Billy is an irreverent and devil-may-care codger to whom one cannot help but feel endeared. At every turn, he speaks his mind and does not play political games to win favor, speaking ill of his own commercial album on the radio and saying some things he ought not say on network television. Though Billy's irreverence may be a nightmare to those with whom he comes in contact, it is a delight to watch, an entertainer in the public eye who simply has no cares left to give.
In the scenes between the American president and the prime minister, the film seems to suggest that love has not only the power to make people to feel good, but also to motivate them to act with bravery. After he sees the American president coming on to his assistant, Natalie, David attends a press conference and finally stands up to the bullish American president, publicly articulating the tensions between the two countries. David, affected by his own jealousy and sense of personal emasculation at the hands of the American president, is jolted into articulating the tensions between the two nations on a political level.
The intertwining of the stories gets more complex when we realize that Harry, the boss of Sarah and the flirtatious secretary, Mia, is married to Karen. In the preceding scenes, we have seen that Harry has an interest in the seductive Mia, so the revelation that he has a wife is a dramatic one, one which raises the stakes of the film. There is an implication that Harry is at risk of straying from Karen, drawn towards the younger woman in the miniskirt at work.
In this section, while there are many moments of levity, there are also many heartfelt moments. In the relationship between Jamie and Aurelia, there is an absurd distance between them in that they are unable to speak the same language. This reaches comic proportions when they struggle to understand one another while fishing the pages of Jamie's book out of a nearby pond. Once they dry off, they each express their love for another, but neither of them knows that the other returns their feeling. Even across the barrier of language and verbal communication, there is a profound intimacy that opens up between the two of them.
