Genre Specific Analysis: Love Actually

'Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport. General opinion makes out that we live in a world of hatred and greed. But I don't see that. Seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as i know none of the phone calls from people on board were messages of hate or revenge, they were all messages of love. lf you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.'

 

Love Actually, the 2003 romantic comedy by Richard Curtis opens in an entirely different way of those films similar to it. For example the stereotypical opening of a Romantic Comedy contains an opening of a plat containing the love between a man and a woman, establishing the main theme of the movie, and also introducing the key characters with a briefly explained plot. However Love Actually opens to a scene at Heathrow Airport, where relatives meet the passengers of the journey in the waiting area near christmas. The scene contains no characters from the film, no story line, it is completely irrelevant to the movie. On the other hand, the opening contains a short narrative, explaining that love exists in many ways, and that love actually is all around us. It also connotes that if you don't have love, or if you don't have someone, you have nothing.

The scene is set in Heathrow Airport, at a busy time of the day. Where the people arriving meet the people who have been waiting for them, to greet them. It opens with a wide angle shot of a crowded area in the airport. We see a woman walking through, and the camera pans to follow her, as she meets up with an old friend and hugs them. This connotes love and affection between them, as we follow her journey through the crowd to meet him, we start to feel empathy as she is shearching for them, then as she finds him we feel her emotion. The credits are set on the bottom half of the screen, and they are played throughout the scene, this makes it easier to concentrate on whats happening behind them, making it easier to follow the story.

The second shot consists of a slow motion mid screen shot. The slow motion gets the audience to carefully look at the emotion portrayed in the shot, and the feelings that are set in the scene. The mid shot of the mother being reunited with her children connoted the happiness she is feeling to be seeing them again, as both of the children run upto her in slow motion to greet her. The scene then continues with similar slow motion shots of different people with different stories, all being reunited with their loved ones. The scene contains a piece of quiet non-diegetic music which helps connote the slow motion shots and the emotion in the scene, this is a common idea which is very often seen in romances, so when people see the slow motion in the opening sequence, they can almost guess that the genre of the movie is going to be a romance. Secondly, 20 seconds into the scene, a non-diegetic voice is projected over the music to set the atmosphere and the theme by announcing how love 'is all around us'. This helps build emotion in the scene because it is dialouge of a theme everyone can relate to, as they all feel love to people in a variety of ways. However this voice over is spoken by the actor Hugh Grant, this actor is widely associated with romantic comedies and chick flicks due to his many roles performed in this genre, making him an important contributer to the setting of the genre and theme.

The scene uses Levi Strauss' narrative theory of binary opposites to show attraction and love in the scene. He uses opposites such as man/woman, adults/children, love/hate to motivate this simple narrative theory which connotes the conflict and attraction between opposites. The scene also uses Barthes' enigma code to set a mystery and to engage the audience in the movie. This has been done my making this scene different from the movie, it doesn't introduce any characters and plots, but it does give us ideas on the main theme. The director has chosen to do this because he wants to keep the rest of the movie seperated from the opening scene, to create a mysterious presence and to engage the audience to carry on watching so everything can be revealed.