The Holiday

Nancy Meyers’s 2006 film follows two women who trade houses at Christmas, one for a village in Surrey, one for Los Angeles. Meyers wrote the script to her cast: Iris’s lines with Kate Winslet in mind, Miles built for Jack Black after she saw School of Rock. The film’s most sought after location never existed. Rosehill Cottage’s exterior was a shell put up in an empty field beside St James’s Church in Shere; the interiors were shot on a Sony stage in Culver City. The 136 minutes split almost evenly between the two stories, so if one romance loses you there is still more than an hour of it left. A third line runs alongside: Eli Wallach as an old screenwriter who hands Iris a list of old pictures, The Lady Eve among them, and carries the film’s argument. Wallach was ninety during the shoot, and Meyers kept reminding him to move more slowly. Dustin Hoffman’s cameo in the video shop was unplanned; he came upon the shoot by chance. A good fit if knowing the cottage is a facade does not spoil it and you want that list of old films to be the spine rather than decoration. Not for anyone who will warm to only one of the two romances, because the film runs both to the end.