Image courtesy Paramount Pictures
In November 2018, actress and comedian Rebel Wilson kicked off controversy by claiming to be the first plus-size star of a romantic-comedy. The furor inspired a great deal of online reminiscing about past plus-size heroines, including a renewed discussion of some of Queen Latifah’s starring roles. Latifah’s broad and varied career broke barriers as a music artist, as an actress, and, crucially, as a plus-sized woman of colour as the central star of romantic comedies. Latifah’s back catalogue of films is spotted with underappreciated gems, but one stands out, especially considering Rebel Wilson’s statement that she hadn’t considered Latifah for the accolade of first plus-sized romcom star because she wasn’t sure if Latifah was “technically” plus-sized - Last Holiday, Latifah’s charming, affirming starring role in a romantic comedy. And the plot of the film is that Latifah is plus-sized.
Last Holiday opens on Georgia (Latifah) living a life of missed possibilities. She works retail, pining after Sean (LL Cool J) and eating Lean Cuisine dinners while she fills a scrapbook with ‘possibilities’: dates that her and Sean could have gone on, gourmet meals she could have eaten. She longs to make the rich meals described by her favorite celebrity chef, Chef Didier (Gerard Depardieu), while she diets instead. In essence, she lives a life of self-denial familiar to most plus-sized women. So many of us spend our lives denying ourselves a greater life, telling ourselves that we’ll take that holiday, ask that guy out, go to that restaurant later, when we’ve lost weight. It’s that context that makes Georgia a rich, believable character, not because we pity her, but because we know her, because we are her. Her self-denial feels real, as do her promises to herself. Not today, tomorrow, she says.
The film truly kicks off when Georgia is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The shock makes Georgia realise she has been wasting her life waiting, and she needs to take advantage of the time she has left. She packs up herself, and all the money she has, and takes herself on a solo trip to the hotel resort in the Czech Republic where Chef Didier presides as head chef. This is the eponymous Last Holiday.
On this holiday, all of Georgia’s possibilities come true, because she has let go of what she believed herself to be capable of. Through a case of mistaken identity, a group of American politicians at the resort mistake her for a powerful businesswoman. She goes base-jumping, and snowboards a black diamond slope, and wears the beautiful clothes of her dreams. All of this is standard “seize the day” stuff, but one scene in particular reveals the special and unique character of the film. Early in Georgia’s tenure at the resort, she attends dinner on her own. When the waiter asks for her order, she asks whether the specials will be available tomorrow. The waiter snootily replies “Chef Didier never makes same special twice”. Georgia’s reply? “Well, I better have them all then.”
This is contrasted with the skinny, but unhappy characters, who ask for Chef Didier’s Michelin-Star-level cooking without butter, or no carbs, or no fat. When Didier hears a single woman has ordered all the specials, he insists on meeting her, and again Georgia lives her dreams - of meeting and befriending her idol - because she has released her anxieties over food.
This is where Last Holiday makes clear that it is not just a romantic comedy where the lead happens to be plus-sized, but a romcom where the heroine being plus-sized is integral to the story and character. Last Holiday’s conception of living a full life is not just having adventures or falling in love; it is being freed from the expectation not to eat with joy or pleasure. It is a bold statement that the joy of eating is an important part of living completely. This is particularly resonant, especially when so much of modern day body-positivity focuses on “loving” one's own body, but simultaneously pivots to “eating clean”. It’s refreshing (from a film released in 2006) to hear that to be a good, lovable plus-size woman, you don’t have to eat “clean” or healthy. Being someone who loves food, even unhealthy “bad” food, is worth loving, and is beautiful.
At one point, Georgia & Didier discuss the secret to life, and conclude that the answer is “butter”, because this is Last Holiday’s thesis statement: to live a life of denial is to live on the verge of death, waiting for the final blow.
Unlike the classic romcoms of the genre, Last Holiday treats its heroine with an almost-protective narrative sweetness. Think of some of the genre’s classics: 27 Dresses, 13 Going on 30, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Even as they fetishise the romance of their leads, these films always leave the impression they’re laughing on the other sides of their faces at the heroines. When Katherine Heigl’s character reveals her 27 dresses, it’s shameful, embarrassing, and the film exposes her for it, emphasising that her embarrassment is at least part of the spectacle. In contrast, Last Holiday refuses to see any of Georgia as embarrassing. Sean, Georgia’s love interest, discovers her “book of possibilities” and in any other film this would be a deeply embarrassing scene that highlighted the cringe-factor of your deepest fantasies being exposed to your crush. Instead it kicks off Sean’s quest to find Georgia and confess his feelings for her. In this universe, it isn’t shameful to dream. Instead, it inspires love and devotion.
This isn’t to say Last Holiday doesn’t fulfill the “comedy” brief of romantic-comedy. It’s certainly funny. Georgia’s humour is sweet and sly, like when she tells a character that her massage isn’t relaxing her because she’s stressed about sleeping with a married man. It’s Georgia’s joy that brings happy, joyful jokes, rather than her shame that makes us cringe and laugh. It’s also fully a romance. Perhaps it’s true that Sean doesn’t have a central role in most of the plot, but the romance, like the humour, is simple and sweet. Sean defends Georgia’s interests even when she’s not physically around. This is romance, a partner who’ll go to bat for you without any expectation that it’ll be noticed. It’s Sean that eventually uncovers that Georgia’s terminal diagnosis was in error, and travels to the resort to tell her, despite his fear of flying, his confusion in foreign countries, and, in a dramatic final scene on a window ledge, his fear of heights. Sean and Georgia are able to confess their feelings because they have both conquered their fears and become the people they needed to be.
Last Holiday masquerades as a simplistic, sweet romantic-comedy, but underneath is a radical challenge to what a romantic-comedy can be. It can be black, it can be plus-sized, it can be caring and sympathetic to its characters. Is it fantasy? Yes, but all kinds of films are fantasies. Should we single Last Holiday out as a particularly unbelievable fantasy? Honestly, I don’t think it matters if we believe it. The better question is, do we want to believe it? Do we want to believe that a beautiful plus-sized woman can save the day, fall in love, and not receive a “makeover” or miraculously lose weight to make it happen? Do we want to believe that choosing to let go of possibility and live fully in reality can save us? That’s the fantasy Queen Latifah sells so honestly, and gives the dream that eating as we want, living how we are, is enough to inspire love.
Bethany Garry is a Scottish writer living in London. She has published poetry in a number of journals, and writes the newsletter Vox Bop. She tweets @brgbethany.
