Listy do M.: The Polish “Love, Actually” Is Pretty Grim, Actually

What if they remade Richard Curtis’ Love, Actually but it was totally not funny and kind of depressing?

2011’s Listy do M., or Letters to Santa, directed by Slovenia’s Mitja Okorn, is, according to this IMDB list of must-watch Polish films, “probably the only good Polish romantic comedy”.

If this is classified as “good”, the others must have the mirth of a Nazi occupation documentary.

Now, Curtis’ own film pretty much unbearable. Apart from Emma Thompson’s moment of all-time quiet devastation when she unwraps Alan Rickman’s Christmas present, nothing in it rings true, the Kiera Knightley story feels stalkery, the Martin Freeman stuff is difficult to watch with your Auntie in the living room, and that opening monologue about 9/11 phone calls is gross and manipulative.

Half an hour into Listy do M., I was dying to watch PM Hugh Grant break workplace sexual harassment guidelines.

Listy follows various vaguely inter-connected stories of love and family on Christmas Eve in Warsaw, loosely based around a radio station and the people who work there. The film starts with Szczepan (Piotr Adamczyk) trying to commit suicide, and gets less cheery as it goes on.

His fall cushioned by a passing truck of Christmas trees, the terminally depressed psychologist and broadcaster starts a manic quest to repair his family. His daughter is in full sullen teen mode, his Dad’s got Alzheimer’s and his wife is bucking a shopping centre Santa in their marital bed. Szczepan drags them out to a forest lake to recreate fuzzy family memories, but they get lost. Freezing and frustrated, husband and wife bicker viciously, yelling about how much they hate eachother. He calls her a “squeamish cunt”.

It’s the mooost wonderful tiiime of the year.

The naughty-list Santa, Melchior (who, according to the colourful, wildly misleading copy writing on the Wikipedia page, is a “testosterone ebullient amateur and admirer of feminine beauty… This arrogant handsome Don Juan is able to seduce with a single glance”) has his phone stolen by a kid. Melchior borrows a phone from the unlucky-in-love Doris and keeps ringing the boy to tell him how he’s gonna beat his ass. The two bond for some reason, go to Mass together, and the kid gets dropped off to an alcoholic mother asleep on the sofa.

In Listy, stray kids keep attaching themselves to adults in need of a lesson. The station manager’s husband is driving home and picks up an orphan from the children’s home by the side of the road. When he brings her home for Christmas Eve supper the wife breaks down because she reminds her of their dead child.

Something tells me the Polish would love the EastEnders Christmas episode.

After far too long of awkward faff, it all wraps up. Babies are born, orphans are taken on and new loves blossom and Jackie DeShannon’s “What the World Needs Now” is piped in to warm our chestnuts.

This misery-stuffed Turkey went down well with domestic audiences: it was, at the time, the third-best opening for a Polish production, and spawned two sequels with the same cookie-cutter structure. The third one was last year’s most popular film at the Polish box office.

Even by the standard of shoddy, cynical Christmas movies, an annual feature at the multiplex, Listy do M is meandering and low in festive energy.

It stretches on like Xmas afternoon with the extended fam.