"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."
"It moved me when I first watched it as a 12-year-old, not even really understanding what her husband had done. But there was something in her performance. The silence of it. How she tries desperately to control her emotions in a way that, even as a preteen, I could somehow understand. As I went back to that film for the next few Christmases, I continued to be struck by Thompson's performance in this small narrative, how much power you can hold by holding"
I was 12 when Love Actually came out and I remembered it as vignettes of love framed by Christmas lights, including a Rowan Atkinson cameo. The film shaped early romantic fantasies about grand gestures and unrequited longing. Some scenes now seem problematic, but the film introduced Joni Mitchell's music. One scene remained vivid: Emma Thompson's character discovers a gift-wrapped necklace that turns out to be a CD of Both Sides Now, realising her husband gave the jewellery to another woman. She goes upstairs, puts the album on, and watches the betrayal settle. Thompson's restrained, silent performance communicates the effort to control grief and the enduring power of held-back emotion.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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