Paul Feig and Emma Thompson’s Last Christmas, starring Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh, works as a thoughtful dramedy, but the rom-com elements feel arbitrarily inserted and disconnected from the core narrative.
Opening Thursday night in North America, Universal’s Last Christmas is a frothy and knowingly lightweight holiday treat, bolstered by strong performances, a refreshing specificity and a refreshingly informal diversity that adds literal and metaphorical color to the world in which it inhabits. It works as a singular character study of a young woman recovering from trauma and picking at the scabs of a dysfunctional family, but it flounders as a romantic comedy. Without going into details, its specific narrative destination leaves it unable to really explore its value as a modern love story.
Co-written by Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings (from a story by Thompson and Greg Wise), Paul Feig’s Last Christmas concerns a young woman (Emilia Clarke) whose ambitions and drive were halted after nearly succumbing to illness. Kate works at a Christmas shop owned by a tough love-espousing Michelle Yeoh, while she halfheartedly makes an attempt to follow career aspirations to be a singer. Like her father, a former lawyer in Yugoslavia who took his family and fled 18 years prior only to settle for being a cab driver in the states, she seems resigned to a mere existence as she sabotages herself and her friendships in the aftermath of her brush with death.
Henry Golding shows up right after a low point, existing as a pretty literal “Manic Pixie Dream Guy.” He’s handsome, charming, and seemingly willing to show up at random intervals mostly to provide Kate with, well, comfort and joy. It’s an odd relationship, since Tom tells her (and us) almost nothing about himself and seems to exist in a separate movie from the rest of the film. Acting less as a potential suitor and more of a guardian angel, Golding does his best to make Tom more than just a plot device. The film treats the rom-com beats as necessary evils for the sake of greenlighting (and selling) this character study/dramedy.
The more interesting moments are found in Clarke’s conversations with Yeoh (who gets an even more shoe-horned romantic subplot with Peter Mygind) and her issues with her family. The tension between Kate and her not-quite-out-of-the-closet sister (Lydia Leonard) will somewhat remind you of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleebag, and the raw issues at play with Kate’s depressed mother (Emma Thompson) have a lot more weight than whether or not Kate and Tom can “make it work.” The family relationships could have used more fleshing out, either through a longer running time (the film is just 103 minutes) or (all due respect) no romantic side business.
Kate’s career aspirations seem arbitrary as well, even if they mostly provide fodder for a romantic skating rink interlude and, as required by law, another British rom-com climaxing with a public song-and-dance number. Yes, the movie uses the music of George Michael quite well, even if the film is so bloody chaste that we don’t even get a seduction scene set to “Father Figure.” I liked that Kate’s George Michael fandom isn’t “explained,” as it doesn’t need to be, and I appreciated how careful the film was in its handling of Kate’s volunteering at a homeless shelter (she’s not exactly greeted with open arms).
As a character play, Last Christmas gets the job done, providing witty dialogue, thoughtful interactions and a refreshing specificity (the family’s history as refugees living in a post-Brexit London is very much part of the movie) that makes it unique unto itself. However, without going into details, the film’s romantic subplot is a claustrophobic and disconnected dead end. There are at least two third act reveals that should have been offered much sooner, so as to allow proper introspection. Folks showing up to Last Christmas for a romantic comedy may be almost as disappointed as folks showing up to Serenity expecting an old-school film noir thriller.
