Last Christmas

The Literal Heart

The holiday film genre is typically a machine designed for comfort, a predictable assembly line of mistletoe, misunderstandings, and reconciliations in the snow. It is rare for one of these confections to attempt something genuinely bizarre, let alone melancholic. *Last Christmas* (2019), directed by Paul Feig and co-written by Emma Thompson, is a strange, fascinating artifact: a film that wears the glittery costume of a Richard Curtis rom-com but hides a ghost story about organ donation and xenophobia in its pockets. It is a movie that dares to ask the question: What if we took George Michael’s lyrics absolutely, horrifyingly literally?

The premise initially feels like standard holiday fare. Kate (Emilia Clarke) is a cynical, self-destructive elf working in a year-round Christmas shop in Covent Garden. She is the archetype of the "messy millennial woman"—drinking too much, alienating friends, and dragging a suitcase around London like an anchor. Enter Tom (Henry Golding), a man so dashing and impossibly wholesome he seems to have stepped out of a 1940s musical. He twirls around lamp posts; he tells her to "look up" at the architecture; he volunteers at a homeless shelter.

Paul Feig, a director best known for the raucous energy of *Bridesmaids* and *Spy*, here adopts a softer, glossier visual language. He shoots London not just as a tourist destination, but as a twinkling, overwhelming labyrinth that Kate is too numb to navigate. The recurring visual motif of "looking up" serves as a directive not just to the protagonist, but to the audience—an invitation to detach from the cynical grind of modern life (and smartphones) to notice the world’s texture. However, Feig’s London is also shadowed by the specter of Brexit. In a subplot that many critics found jarring, the film threads the anxiety of Kate’s Yugoslavian refugee family through the narrative. It is a bold, if occasionally clumsy, attempt to ground the holiday fantasy in the grim reality of a divided Britain, reminding us that "peace on earth" is a political statement as much as a carol lyric.

But the film’s true weight lies in its central conceit. The "twist"—that Tom is actually the spirit of the organ donor who gave Kate her heart the previous Christmas—transforms the film from a romance into a psychological drama about survivor's guilt. When the revelation drops, it retroactively changes the entire texture of Clarke’s performance. Her Kate is not just "quirky" or "difficult"; she is a woman haunted by the feeling that she is living a borrowed life. Clarke, an actress who has publicly navigated her own serious health battles, infuses Kate with a frantic, brittle energy that feels uncomfortably real. She plays the "after" of a tragedy, the part of the recovery narrative that movies usually skip because it isn't photogenic.

Critically, *Last Christmas* was often dismissed for its tonal whiplash, bouncing between slapstick bird-poop gags and solemn discussions on homelessness. Yet, there is something deeply moving about its earnestness. By literalizing the Wham! lyric—"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart"—the film rejects the metaphor of romance in favor of the biological reality of life. The "romance" is not with a man, but with the organ beating inside her chest. Tom is not a suitor; he is a part of herself she has not yet learned to thank.

Ultimately, *Last Christmas* survives its own messiness because of this morbid sincerity. It is a film that argues the greatest love story isn't finding a partner under the mistletoe, but learning to live within one's own body after trauma. It is a sugar-spun cookie with a surprisingly bitter center, suggesting that before we can give our heart to someone special, we must first accept that it belongs to us.