In a grade 11 Media Studies class my teacher posed the question of whether life imitates art or art imitates life. It’s three and a half years later and I think I’ve finally found a decent answer. I think that the debate is a two lane highway; we would like to think that we talk like they do in the movies, and the movies would like to think that they talk like we do in real life. Nancy Meyers’ new film The Holiday tries to play both sides and I’m a little divided; we need a good piece of fluff like this every once in a while, but, as much as we’d like to believe otherwise, there is a line that divides fairy tales from reality that neither halves of the film, although one tires, ever cross.

The plot revolves around two women, Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and Iris (Kate Winslet), who both have a lot of emotional baggage. They have both recently gotten out of relationships because their men cheated on them, about which Iris cares too much and Amanda too little. To make matters worse; Iris still loves her ex, who kind of forgot to tell her that he has become engaged to his mistress.

Both, who are hurt and confused about love and in need of a drastic change, come upon a highly unlikely little scheme in which they will swap houses (one lives in L.A. as a movie trailer editor, the other in a small English town as a journalist), for two weeks during the holidays, in hopes that each will receive the epiphany they have been waiting for. I love how Hollywod has a tendency to simplify complicated matters. Shouldn’t this swapping process at least involve a little paper work?

The film opens with a narration by Iris which uses a lot of fancy metaphors in order to describe love; she’s not the first movie character to ever try this. However, I get the feeling that the people who spend their days trying to tear love apart, rip it open, analyze it and then put it back together are those who know the least about it. The truth is that love is not psychoanalysis, not a concept made to be put on the operating table. Most of us would like to believe that love is the stuff of myth and legend, the most ideal of which has a funny and unpredictable way of materializing out of thin air.

This is why what happens to Amanda in England is much more engrossing and whimsical than what happens to Iris in America, which tries so hard for realism that it is mostly flat and uninspired by comparison. In London, Amanda meets Iris’ brother Graham (Jude Law), who, despite being drunk, is a real charmer. Amanda, seeing the opportunity to take advantage of their chance meeting, does something completely unlike herself and sleeps with Graham, thus complicating the situation, considering that she is leaving the country in two weeks. This story is fluffy and cute and mostly involves the kind of situations that only people in the movies seem to stumble upon, but Meyers handles it with whimsical care. We can see where it will end from a mile away, but not how it will get there, and because it only occupies half of the film, never overstays its welcome. The surprise is that Meyers allows this fairytale relationship to build naturally from lust, to romance, and then slowly allows us to understand who these people are and what their situation is as it progresses, or so we hope, on its way to becoming love. In this sense, Amanda’s journey feels more real than Iris’.

Iris’ story therefore doesn’t work out as well. Moving into Amanada’s mansion in L.A. she is ecstatic, but still can’t seem to shake her ex, who texts and calls her, sending her pages from his book to read over. She blames her unhappiness of his inability to give her the space to fall out of love with him. I don’t think it’s that simple. In fact, she’s just as much to blame. The problem is that Iris is always looking for a reason to justify her love and therefore her unhappiness. But love doesn’t need to be justified, just look at the Amanda story; it will bloom naturally on its on terms. Negation is Iris’s biggest problem. This girl is miserable because she tries so hard not to be.

Iris is all wrong because she spends so much time thinking about love, that she doesn’t have the ability to start over. She is so naive in dealing with her emotional crisis in fact, that it is hard to sympathize with her, and it seems as though Meyers is just filling space as she involves Iris in a subplot about an aged Hollywood screenwriter. The screenwriter’s purpose, I think, is to teach Iris that her happiness doesn’t depend on a man, which is fine until we meet Miles (a very likable Jack Black), who enters the film as a possible love interest for Iris far too late to ever care about. Hence, there is no time to build a proper romance, and whether or not they end up together feels rushed and tacked on compared to that splendid little tale of Amanda in England.