keira knightley wearing a hat (and wearing a scarf)

It was just announced that “Love Actually”, the Richard Curtis cinematic sugar plum fairy from 2003 that tends to turn swaths of movie lovers into the Montagues and the Capulets, trading insults and drawing swords, would be getting the sequel treatment – the short sequel treatment, that is. This got many people wondering many different things, of course, but it got Cinema Romantico wondering if Keira Knightley would be wearing a hat in this sequel because Cinema Romantico has famously contended that Keira Knightley’s Hat in “Love Actually” could engender world peace if only people would stop screaming for five seconds about how much they abhor empty rom com calories and just……look. So I asked on the various platforms of the social media interwebs, will Keira wear a hat?

My friend Daryl suggested that perhaps Keira would not wear a hat and that I, a completely impartial critic who is simultaneously totally biased in Keira’s favor, would fall all over myself to praise this tactical costume change-up, probably calling it something like, say, a mixture of transplendent and stupendous – call it, stupsplendentous. This wouldn’t be inaccurate. But the thing is, for all this blog’s Keira Knightley In Hats flattery, we are just as aware of how she pretty much slays any form of clothing like a silver screen Kate Middleton, just as she slays in any sort of role period because Keira is transformational.

Keira, see, does not figuratively (literally) shapeshift like Day-Lewis. No, she has a timeless quality that allows her to function equally brilliantly in period pieces and modern fare. This is why Cecilia Tallis’s emotional repression that eventually gives way is strikingly akin to Joanna Reed’s, just as I swear, if you look close, Elizabeth Benet and Gretta James possess the same sort of sunny ferocity. And though that might make it sound like her performances across the eras are the same, she provides distinctive shading to each character to set them apart, like Cecilia passionately plunging ahead and Joanna cautiously easing forward. That shading, of course, extends just as ably to costuming, where Keira can cycle through all manner of wardrobe choices, past or present, while making each one not merely believable but so damn fetch.

For instance...

Keira Knightley in a hat.

Keira Knightley in a scarf.

I just blew your mind.