CIFF 2011: Love Actually...Sucks!

Filmmaker Scud returned to the fest with his latest work, Love Actually...Sucks! (and hopes to return again next year with another one he said). This film portrays several different relationships of casually associated people. Stories are intertwined, and begin at a wedding where they are all guests. The wedding reception ends unhappily, as a tribute video to the happy couple turns out to be an explicit film of the groom--and his male lover! This set up gave the audience an idea of what to expect of the rest of the film as the stories began to develop.


The stories are: an incestuous affair between siblings that they keep hidden from their mother; a dance school teacher whose rich client, a mature lady from a failed marriage, insists he be her personal teacher; a painter, male, who falls for his beautiful male model, but who doesn't return his affections; a lesbian couple, one who works in the police and the other who likes to pretend to be something she isn't; and a love triangle where one of the men just cannot let go of his former girlfriend. Some of these characters appear in the other storylines, which are mixed throughout the film.

There are a lot of realistic sexual acts depicted, which makes for some audience awkwardness, but overall I thought the storylines were well-written and the dynamics and variety of the relationships were explored well. The weakest was the lesbian couple, whose relationship wasn't explored in much depth, and a little too lurid ending to the love triangle. During Q&A Scud said that all these stories are based on real events, news clippings he saw and such, and that the title is a take on the popular ensemble film Love Actually.