Notting Hill: Romance & Defending Anna Scott
In which I defend Anna Scott, talk about autism, and appreciate the romance in Notting Hill.
Hello friends.
I think I may have finished my 100th watch of Notting Hill this week, and to celebrate I decided I’d like to dust off my notes about the movie. Last year I went and did a wee google to see if anyone had already explored the idea that Anna Scott may be autistic, and found instead a slew of articles and blog posts that were so unfairly critical they verged on slanderous. One such article is explicitly titled “Dear Anna Scott: Fuck You”, while one podcast I listened to went so far as to call her "consistently a piece of shit”. It all made me wonder if I’d been watching this film all wrong—or if romance is dead, perhaps shrivelled to the size of raisins.
Since then, I’ve realised I am 100% correct in being an Anna Scott appreciator, and everyone else is wrong 😤
(If anyone would like to discuss this film critically with me, maybe even through an autism perspective, please send me a message. I’m being very normal about it and have a normal amount of thoughts.)
Something I love about this film is Anna and William’s comparative differences, they way these things both hinder their romance and make them well-suited to one another. One thing I don’t see enough in discussions about this film is how both protagonists, Anna and William, contribute to the push and pull, the steps toward and away from one another throughout the course of the film. It is only when they have both realised the error(s) of their ways, and stepped into vulnerability, that they are able to come together in the end. I really like that the movie depicts these characters as people who react in line with the environments, social conditions, and traumas they’ve experienced, regardless of whether those reactions are “good”. It feels very real to me.
Anna Scott is a huge conventionally attractive movie star, an ideal, someone who must be self-assured and self-contained any time she’s out in public. She is not shown to have any friends, family, or people with whom she is close. We see instead that she has little privacy, unreliable work/life scheduling, and little connection with anyone outside of her boyfriend, who we are shown is fatphobic and judgemental, and who springs his presence on her without warning (something that would dysregulate many an autistic person).
“Well, don't over-do it. I don't want people saying, 'There goes that famous actor with the big, fat girlfriend." — Jeff
In comparison, William is a small-city bookshop owner. He is familiar with every stall and store on the block and is surrounded by people he recognises, if not outright knows, and he is shown to be in community with several named and somewhat prominent characters: Spike (roommate), Honey (Sister), Max (friend), Bella (Friend), Bernie (friend), and Martin (coworker/employee). He’s been unlucky in love, and is single.
I will not defend Anna’s choice to kiss William, go out with him, and invite him back to her hotel without some mention of her boyfriend, Jeff. However, I will say that the movie makes a point of telling us that everyone except William knew she had a boyfriend, and when William admits he didn’t know, everyone is shocked. This has always made me wonder if her lack of communication on this front perhaps wasn’t intentionally secretive or malicious, but rather an erroneous assumption that William would know, just like he knew who she was from the beginning. Later when she’s at his house after nude photos of her are published, she says “This is such a mess. I come to you to protect myself against more crappy gossip and now I've landed in it all over again. For God's sake, I've got a boyfriend.” Soon after she explains that it’s only the press who believe she still has a boyfriend (Jeff), leaving us to infer that they have broken up.
This is fairly emblematic of the recurring conflict in this film: William’s life of quietude and complete naive when it comes to the press, and what it means to Anna to have not only no privacy, but to have everything “splashed across the newspapers as entertainment”, with complete disregard for the trauma and discomfort it might cause. I really relate to Anna’s communication style in this moment, because oftentimes my brain is going faster than my mouth, so what can come out is a statement without all the background context that would make it make sense and/or change its meaning.
When the british tabloids publish illegally-sold pornographic images of Anna, the place she deems safe is William’s house and William’s company; I find it really nice that Anna sees him as someone she can go to in order to seek comfort and safety, not only because it brings them together, but because I think it really speaks to their connection and speaks to William’s character as a sympathetic and empathetic person. Furthermore, it makes sense to me that she’d seek out a familiar place and person in a time of deep emotional dysregulation and trauma. William is good at being kind, but again, when it comes to sympathising with her experiences with the press, he is later ultimately unable to meet her where she’s at mid-trigger, saying, “this is crazy behavior. Can't we just laugh about this? Seriously—in the huge sweep of things, this stuff doesn't matter.” when she is once again dysregulated by the press taking photos of them half dressed at his front door. As well-intended as his words may have been, they didn’t validate her fears, and instead relegated them to the realm of unreasonable.
In fact, saying, “All I'm asking for is a normal amount of perspective” does the same thing, implying her understanding of the situation isn’t as bad as she’s making it out to be. He does not engage in perspective-taking, and instead communicates that her perspective is not the right one. Anna rightly replies, “You're right. Of course, you're right. It's just that I've dealt with this garbage for ten years now—you've had it for ten minutes. Our perspectives are different.”
Thus, I argue that William Thacker is not the pure faultless puppy dog he is so often called.
The interview sequence…
Some people don’t like that Anna didn’t tell William she’d be working and doing interviews when he arrived at her hotel the first time, which baffles me because she literally tells him she thought they’d be done by the time he got there, implying she arranged for him to come at a time she wasn’t working. Some people also don’t like that she didn’t speak up for William and get him out of the interviews, which also baffles me because William is a grown man who could have spoken for himself and left at any time, had he really wanted to. These feel like small examples of the disparity between how Anna is viewed vs how William is viewed.
Push & pull: The Fear and Reward of Vulnerability
When Anna brings up love (“And you, and love?”), William attempts to avoid answering by getting up from the table, turning away, and saying, “Well, there's a question—without an interesting answer.” Which reflects his current self-fulfilling sentiments on love and relationships, that he will end up still sitting on his friends Bella and Max’s couch in 30 years, depressingly single. Anna takes another small step forward, following his pull-back with, “I have thought about you”, but William, in his kindness and his fear of rejection, makes it clear she doesn’t have to say anything. To this she opens up and explains that anytime she has “tried to keep things normal with anyone normal, it's been a disaster.” This is another thing I deeply relate to that is rooted in my experiences as a late-diagnosed autistic and physically disabled woman, where masking and trying to be “normal” with “normal people” has historically not ended well because it’s fundamentally at odds with my body. William says he understands this, “absolutely”, and changes the subject to the film she is learning lines for—and if you watch closely, she seems disappointed by this, or at least not very happy, because she wanted to have the conversation. There is so much vulnerability in a lot of their dialogue that I think gets missed, especially when it comes to William.
The relational tension between them builds throughout the day, while they spend time comfortably coexisting (one of the most romantic and lovely things ever). Anna again brings up love, saying that the Chagall painting of a floating wedding couple, with a goat as company, “feels like how being in love should be. Floating through a dark blue sky.” William doesn’t turn from the topic of love this time, but meets this by saying, “With a goat playing a violin,” and they both laugh over the idea that:
“Happiness wouldn't be happiness without a violin-playing goat.”
And from there, the conversation blooms. There is constant movement in the direction of openness and connection, a mutual push.
Later, Anna initiates conversations with a subverted sexual innuendo, “You know what they say about men with big feet? Big feet… Large… shoes.” They speak about nudity clauses, and there is banter that contains sexual undertones. She kisses his cheek goodnight. He hopes she will come to him during the night, and she does.
In their small bubble, they’re able to connect. What Anna needed was to be able to relax and trust that she was safe, that this was a private space within which she could open up and talk and be a little vulnerable with someone she likes. What William needed was to stop running away, to hold space for the possibility that he could love and be loved by Anna.
“Look at me—not counting the American—I've only loved two girls in my whole life, both total disasters.” — William
After spending the night together, Anna expresses concern about the course of their relationship dynamic, and how William thinks of her now that they’ve slept together and woken up the next day. “Rita Hayworth used to say, 'they go to bed with Gilda—they wake up with me.’ Do you feel that?” She follows this up with, “Her most famous part—men went to bed with the dream, and they didn't like it when they woke up with the reality. Do you feel that way with me?” This time, William takes a step toward her by saying, “You're lovelier this morning than you have ever been,” and she makes him breakfast in bed. Anna is someone who doesn’t trust easily, but she trusts William.
The good times don't last.
As previously mentioned, the press snap photos of William half-dressed, and then snap photos of her too. William doesn’t validate her fear, and she leaves. Time passes, and William is eventually given Anna’s agent’s details from his sister, and goes to see her on a film set. I always wonder if they might have gotten together had he stayed that day and talked to her then and there, instead of walking away after hearing her tell a co-star that he’s “No-one. Just… Some guy from the past. I don’t know what he’s doing here. Bit of an awkward situation”. I’d like to note that none of this is exactly a lie; She was happy to see him and said there were “things to say” During the later scene in which she asks to be with Willian, she said she wanted to talk to him.
I sympathise with William hearing her answer and interpreting it as her “dismissing” him “out of hand”, while also sympathising with Anna’s explanation: “You expect me to tell the truth about my life to the most indiscreet man in England?” We know that she yearns for privacy and safety, such as when she allowed the press to keep believing she was still with Jeff, and it makes complete sense to me that she wouldn’t admit the truth to her co-star, someone who may or may not be her friend. The co-star also objectifies a woman right in front of her and she refuses to engage in it; Why would she feel inclined to be open and honest with him?
The next day, Anna appears at William’s bookshop and asks if he might perhaps be open to liking her again, which William gently declines. “It took like a perfect situation, apart from that foul temper of yours—but my relatively inexperienced heart would, I fear, not recover if I was once again ... cast aside, which I would absolutely expect to be.”
His fear of heartbreak stops him from saying yes. He has no faith in his ability to keep love, so he often avoids the subject and denies himself the possibility, ultimately choosing the same singlehood he simultaneously wants to avoid. When it comes to Anna, he’s much more vulnerable than he is with the other women he goes on dates with, because he really, truly likes her.
And it’s only at the ending press conference that he takes the leap, having realised he’s made a mistake in turning her down.
Why do so many people think Anna Scott is a terrible person?
I’m not saying all criticism of her is rooted in internalised misogyny, but I do feel like this film puts Anna in an interesting position. A gendered postition, if you will.
Anna is the more confident one, and confidence is usually seen as a masculine trait. She’s also the more successful one, making her the “breadwinner”. William has a gentleness about him, is quiet and more nervous than she is, which again feels counter to what patriarchy tends to value and demand from men. There’s even a part in the film where he slips and says “whoopsie daisies”, and Anna makes fun of him by saying no one has said "whoopsie daisies" for fifty years “...and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets.” Anna is more active, while William is more of a follower.
In the bookstore scene after the misunderstanding on the film set, in terms of basic colour symbolism, I feel like Anna wearing all blue and William wearing a pink shirt is emblematic of the frequently gendered positions they’re in; She is the one confessing her feelings and apologising for her wrongdoings, while William is, like many of the women in the contemporary romance novels I’ve been reading, the recipient.
In the end, William is the one who leaves his old world and is brought into her larger one, something that again is opposite in many romance novels—and I love that Anna gains community, because William has a group of friends and family that love and accept her.
Let’s talk about Anna’s anger. This is something that is brought up often in discussions around why she’s a bad person, but I wonder… If her blow up at William's house after she sees the press were gender flipped, I wonder if people would be more or less willing to write it off. A lot of fiction allows men to have emotionally charged and quite explosive moments while their female counterpart soothes him and overlooks the odd whiskey glass thrown into the fireplace. I wonder if part of the discomfort people feel with Anna is that the gender roles are kind of flipped, and the woman is the one with the strong and explicit, outwardly explosive emotions, while the man is the one in the more apparent caring and empathetic role.
I’ve noticed that oftentimes a male love interest’s outward anger and upset is framed and accepted as something the woman can soothe, and that soothing is something that brings them together. In this case, the woman’s anger and upset is not given the same grace, or understanding both in and outside of the text. Alternatively, the man’s anger cannot be soothed and he leaves, and then must grovel to win back the heart of the one he loves and desires—exactly what Anna Scott must do (gender things🎶).
I suppose my reason for loving this film is that I see two slightly messy humans finding someone they love, and stumbling along the path to being happy together. I’m a sucker for romance stories that centre people who have trauma and deep-rooted fears that drive them both toward and apart from the one they love. As someone with a non-normative body and C-PTSD, nothing is more hopeful to me than a romance where trauma does not make one unloveable. With this in mind, I feel that calling Anna Scott a ‘piece of shit’ shows an unwillingness or inability to meet her where she is. People who go through trauma and are triggered can and do react in ways that are unpleasant—which is not an excuse, just an explanation. It feels very punitive to see someone react in an emotionally distressed and uncomfortable way, and completely write them off—especially in a situation where someone downplays and invalidates their emotions and perspective. William’s voice is calmer, more controlled—but he fails to empathise, and therefore plays a part in their relationship fracturing in that moment.
An autistic trait I often struggle with is the emotional dysregulation that is triggered when I’m misunderstood. It feels uncomfortable, almost like my fight or flight sense is going off, and I feel disconnected from the people around me. I’m also not comfortable with routines breaking, or being told one thing and emotionally preparing for it, only to have it taken away without warning. In this scene, I always feel so deeply for Anna because a bad event is becoming even worse; She’s rightfully upset about what will come of her privacy being violated, is already vulnerable, and then has the comforting presence of William essentially pulled like a rug out from beneath her. He doesn’t understand, and doesn’t think she’s reacting sanely. And that sucks!
But I love that William doesn’t completely write her off after her outburst. Though it doesn’t happen immediately, he is emotionally intelligent enough to recognise that that moment, for Anna, is especially difficult and low. The whole reason she was at his house to begin with was to avoid this horrible thing that was happening to her, and I think that he realises that what drove her triggered reaction was that safe bubble being suddenly popped, knowing that violation of privacy would be everywhere for days, and filed away forever. I think, if they’d spoken that day on the film set, this would have come out into the open.Ultimately, the movie does not suggest that he or anyone should simply accept someone’s explosive anger, because he later points out that her temper is an obstacle to them getting together.
She really was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.
And I will die on this hill!
What do you think?