Love Actually is a 2003 Christmas-themed comedy film that features an ensembled cast of many famous British actors. The screenplay studies in deep the different aspects of love as shown through ten stories involving people, different each other in lifestyle and background.
The story starts on December and is played out in a weekly countdown culminating on Christmas.
Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson) are a happily married couple. He is the director of a design agency and his new secretary begins to make him very clear advances and eventually he, flattered by the situation, buys her an expensive necklace.
Karen discovers the necklace in Harry’s coat pocket and assumes it is a gift for her. Then he gives her a similarly shaped box, and when she opens it, she is heartbroken to find it is a Joni Mitchell CD so she finally understands that the necklace was for another woman. She later confronts Harry and asks him what he would do if he were her. He feels ashamed and admits his foolishness.
Emma plays a heart wrenching scene in which she moves away for a moment from the room where her family is and heads to her bedroom, where she allows herself to give into tears, as Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” plays.
According to some film critics this is the best scene of the whole film, Emma said that it is not difficult to feel involved in situations like this because they are very common and people feel emotionally involved.
“That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through,” Emma told to The Telegraph. “I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn’t meant for me. Well, it wasn’t exactly that, but we’ve all been through it. I’ve had so much bloody practise at crying in a bedroom, then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer”.
The film also stars Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson and others.
I love Emma Thompson 