Four stars. Rated PG-13, for sexual candor and profanity
By Derrick Bang
Emilia Clarke has the best eyebrows in town.
Mind you, her eyes are rather fetching as well: sparkling, seductive, laden with promise.
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| Kate (Emilia Clarke), a hopeless mess made even more tragic by the bright green elf costume required during working hours, cannot understand why Tom (Henry Golding) keeps pursuing her, despite her constant rejection. |
But the eyebrows speak volumes, as skillfully manipulated by an actress who truly understands the power of expression. She’s a force of nature who carries this enchanting film through sheer presence and personality. With her merest glance — without a word — she’s mischievous, curious, crestfallen, hopeful or absolutely shattered.
Or she smugly acknowledges a particularly tart bon mot.
Which is not to say that spoken words are superfluous here: far from it. Clarke is equally adept at tearful self-reproach and saucy one-liners, and this script — credited to Emma Thompson, Greg Wise and Bryony Kimmings — is laden with plenty of the latter. Indeed, this unapologetically sentimental holiday charmer has the wit, effervescence and cunningly sculpted characters we normally expect from Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Pirate Radio, among others).
The even greater surprise is that director Paul Feig — known mostly for broad-stroke pratfall comedies such as Bridesmaids, Spy and the updated Ghostbusters — takes an appropriately restrained (dare I say British?) approach to this far gentler bon bon.
Kate (Clarke) harrumphs around London in a perpetual state of disarray, forever dragging a suitcase while exhausting the patience of friends who soon regret letting her sofa-surf. She’s erratic, undependable and persistently selfish: a bundle of bad decisions who never met a bar she couldn’t shut down, or a bloke she couldn’t tolerate during another ill-advised one-nighter.
The question is from whence these self-destructive tendencies spring; answers come in captivating fits and spurts.
Her presence inevitably is heralded by the jangle of bells on her shoes: an insufferable consequence of her job as a green-garbed elf in a year-round Covent Garden Christmas shop owned and managed by the imperious “Santa” (Michelle Yeoh). When not at work or getting soused, Kate hustles to music or theatrical auditions for which she’s inevitably late and ill-prepared: a fitful attempt to reclaim the vocal glory displayed as a young choir performer, when she and her family still lived in what used to be Yugoslavia.
Once upon a time, Santa saw potential in Kate: a radiant personality that pleased customers and enhanced sales. But that Kate has long been absent; the hopeless mess who replaced her is in serious danger of losing her job.
