The holiday – Nancy Meyers

Everyone has his skeleton in the closet. I have The Holiday.

It is a romantic comedy of 2006 directed by Nancy Meyers and with a well-known cast: Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jack Black and Jude Law. I saw it for the first time in a period when I really needed to dream (and to travel and to fall in love too) and I must say that it touched me, though the film’s plot is a little bit foregone and corny.

The main characters are two women, one is English (Iris) and the other one American (Amanda).  That lead a very different life, but both have their heart broken. They both decide to take a holiday to escape and to recover their forces, in a place a long way away and different from that one where they usually live and, especially, to have a solo travel. They sign in to a house swap website and that’s how their lives begin to meet, as one spends the holiday time in the other one’s house.

A few days later, Amanda finds herself in a rustic house in Surrey’s countryside, buried by snow and with no incentive in the surroundings but the only one pub in the little village nearby, while Iris is plunged into a supermodern villa in the hot Los Angeles, surrounded by ex Hollywood stars.

Their solo travels turn into the discovering of repressed parts of theirselves thanks to the encounters they have.

Amanda, indeed, bumps into Iris’ brother, widower and with two daughters, who is also very disappointed from life. Iris begins to meet with Miles, a composer with low self-confidence, and becomes close friend of Arthur, an old man very well-known once in Hollywood cinema and that now hides himself in loneliness. Love affairs and friendships will flourish but…we must never tell the ending!

This is a simple film, unpretentious, one of those romantic films for which filmgoers are at a loss for words but that, after all, give rise to positive emotions, sweeten your heart and make us dream. Because, let’s face it, lot of us got the chance to leave for a solo travel – or just intended to do that – because of a heartbreak. And we also daydreamed to find love during our journey and in a romantic way. Maybe it occurred and it had an unhappy end. But that is not the point, sometimes we just want to daydream a little bit and this is the perfect film to do that.

Sometimes everyone need a moral cuddle.

So, take up chocolate, curl up on the couch and sweeten yourselves!

{Cover image taken from IMDB}