Emma Thompson’s quiet suffering in the hit Christmas movie helped me to realise that I didn’t need to stay with someone who had betrayed me
I
was 12 when Love Actually came out. In the eyes of my younger self it was a great film – vignettes of love I could only imagine one day feeling, all coloured by the fairy lights of Christmas. And there was even a cameo from Mr Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson. The film captured the romance I craved as a preteen, the idea that maybe a kid I fancied in my class would learn the drums for me and run through airport security to ask me out.
I was young enough to think it was sweet for Keira Knightley’s husband’s best friend to turn up on her doorstep declaring his quite obviously unrequited love. I even thought it was adorable that he ruined their wedding video by filming only closeups of her face. Of course, I feel differently now about problematic moments like these – even if I do have the film to thank for introducing me to Joni Mitchell.
I’d be happy to never watch it again, but there’s one scene that has always stuck with me and that is when Emma Thompson ’s character finds out her husband (Alan Rickman) is having an affair. She discovers a gift-wrapped necklace in his coat pocket and assumes it will be her Christmas present. Instead, when she opens it, she finds a CD of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now , and the realisation that he has given the jewellery to another woman. She goes upstairs, puts the album on, and we watch for a few tense minutes as the weight of betrayal and deceit hangs over her. She stands alone in her room only allowing herself a moment to cry silently before she heads back downstairs to her family.
