This is the only non-garbage couple in ‘Love Actually’

There are half a dozen different romantic couples in the beloved film, all as bad as the next, but one stands out for being good, actually.

Let’s clear something up, right out of the gate: Love Actually is a bad movie.

There are serious problems with this film and the way that it treats its female characters. Without relitigating this issue, just think of the incidents of harassment, stalking and breathtakingly offensive misogyny going on in Love Actually.

— This story originally appeared on whimn.com.au —

Think of poor Keira Knightley, and poor Martine McCutcheon and poor, poor Laura Linney, who is such a victim of the patriarchy that she is unable to be perceived of as both a carer and a sexual being. F**k. That. S**t! Especially at Christmas time.

But let’s clear a second thing up, right out of the gate: I will be watching Love Actually this Christmas. I might have already watched it this festive season. There’s a fair chance that I will watch it again.

Related: Is ‘Love Actually’ maybe kind of bad?

Related: ‘Pretty Woman’ almost had a very ‘dark’ ending

Related: Someone actually married Hugh Grant for real

Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon. Picture: Love Actually

As Roxane Gay put it while talking about Pretty Woman, you can understand and realise the problems with a piece of pop culture and still enjoy watching it. So it was with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and so it is with Love Actually.

As you settle in one Sunday night, bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio by your side, ruminate on this: What is the best storyline in Love Actually? Or, rather, which of all the couples in the movie is the one that isn’t total and complete rubbish?

It’s not the lecherous Colin and his bevy of Wisconsin babes and his allegedly “big knob”, is it? (The lady doth protest too much, methinks.) It’s not the terrifying love triangle of Peter, Juliet and Mark, which rewards stalking and the plagiarism of Bob Dylan film clip aesthetics.

Actually kinda creepy. Picture: Love Actually

It’s not Jamie and Aurelia, who get engaged without ever having a proper conversation.

Funny though he may be, it’s not Prime Minister David and Natalie, with all of its fatphobic overtones and sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s definitely not Harry, Karen and Mia, a storyline so awful it brings me to tears just writing this sentence. And don’t even get me started on the egregious treatment of Sarah by Karl, by Harry and by everyone involved in the making of this movie.

That leaves us with three choices: Billy Mack and his manager Joe, the father/son relationship between Daniel and Sam (with Joanna thrown in at the end there), and Jack and Just Judy, the porn stand-ins.

I’m ruling Billy and Joe inadmissable on account of the fact that until the very end of the movie their plot line has nothing to do with love, actually, and everything to do with commerce, and Daniel and Sam (and Joanna) are very sweet but not exactly hook-it-to-my-veins high romance.

The only possible conclusion to make, when faced with the veritable buffet of bad couples in Love Actually is that Jack and Just Judy — the storyline with the least screen-time in the movie and the most gratuitous nudity — is the best one. Actually.

The porn stand-ins are the best couple in 'Love Actually'. Picture: Supplied

How’s this for a meet cute? The loveable, huggable Martin Freeman and Joanna Page, the radiant smiley emoji turned sentient, are two body doubles in a porn film. They meet while simulating sex first fully-clothed and then, adorably nude, while film technicians all around them check the lighting and choreography.

Yes, this film contains the line “Massage the nipples, Jack” and if you ask me, it’s all the better for it.

This is just about the least romantic, most awkward circumstances in which to meet someone, which is why it works so spectacularly well. Porn stand-ins are real people too, the film seems to say. They fall in love with someone they meet in the office too, even if that office is a marbled mansion full of surfaces that can be easily wiped down after use.

Related: The real reason Keira Knightley wore that hat in ‘Love Actually’

Related: The 4 new Christmas films coming to Netflix this year

Related: If you loved ‘A Christmas Prince’ you’ll love this new Netflix film

Just Judy and Jack’s blushing and mumbling conversations are as awkward and hesitant as a first date, even when conducted while completely starkers and simulating sex act after sex act.

Almost all of the romantic pairings in Love Actually are couples whose connections are founded on the purely physical, with barely any conversation at all. There’s Colin and his American girls, about whom he knows that they pronounce the world ‘bottle’ differently and that they sleep in one bed, naked, because they can’t afford pyjamas. Mark has been avoiding Juliet (though he has been filming her, secretly, for a video whose purpose, in retrospect, is incredibly creepy) for years.

Sarah likes Karl because he is Rodrigo Santoro, and can you blame the girl? That Karl turns out to be a f**kboy who can’t understand that Sarah has a disabled brother for whom she cares and loves is so totally unsurprising, albeit devastating. Jamie and Aurelia don’t even speak the same language.

Actor Laura Linney with Rodrigo Santoro in scene from film "Love Actually". Picture: Love Actually

Not Jack and Just Judy, though. Each little snippet of their interactions shows the pair slowly getting to know each other. They talk about the new Prime Minister and their Christmas plans, they talk about their past jobs (“I stood in for Brad Pitt on Seven Years in Tibet,” Jack says. “Bloody freezing”) and the day-to-day grind. The kind of stuff that you talk about when you’re trying to figure out whether or not there might be something there.

“You know I have to say, Judy, this is a real pleasure,” Jack says to her, at one point. “It’s lovely to find someone you can actually chat to.”

“Thank you,” Judy replies. “And ditto!”

When Jack finally musters up the courage to ask Judy on a date — “Sorry to be a bit forward,” he says, while Judy is simulating a blow job — the stakes are real.

We’ve actually seen this couple getting to know one another. We want them to go on a date. We want them to have a Christmas kiss. We want to see them, fully clothed and away from the porn set, in a respectable restaurant drinking a mid-priced bottle of wine and fighting over who will pick up the cheque.

I mean, that kiss! Picture: Supplied

The best, most joyful moment in the movie, then, isn’t Sam vaulting security lines at the airport to get to Joanna or Jamie rallying the Portuguese community in his quest to interrupt Aurelia while she works in a restaurant. It’s not even that poor little octopus boy jammed into the back seat of the Prime Minister’s bentley — eight is a lot of legs, David — on the way to the carol concert.

It’s Judy telling Jack, on the doorstep of her parents’ house, that all she wants for Christmas is him. After she bids him goodbye, Jack lets out an almighty yelp of delight, leaping from the stairs to the pavement in celebration. That, more than anything in the movie, encapsulates how that first blush of romantic achievement feels: Momentous, celebratory, like the very first time. That, at the end of the day, is love, actually.

— Hannah-Rose Yee is a freelance writer and contributor, continue the conversation @hannahroserose

— This article originally appeared on whimn.com.au and is reproduced here with permission