Film Opening Analysis: Love Actually

The opening scene to love actually begins with a crowed arrival gate, at Heathrow airport, where people are seen reuniting with families, friend and significant others.  We are able to straight away tell the genre is romance or a rom-com. This is because the opening contains aspects of romance due to the obvious tile; also because of the joyful sweet moments that can be seen in the opening .To capture the moment’s camera angles such as close-ups and medium shots are used to present different relationships for example mother and daughter. However, although the individual characters have there own unique relationships one thing they all have is common is love. Likewise, slow-paced editing is also used to show the audience the raw emotions the characters in the scene feel.

This makes the target audience, who are mostly female, feel empathy for the characters. The reason why the target audiences go to watch romantic comedy is because stereotypically females are more emotional than males. Movies like love actually cause the audience to feel a variety of emotions, which is why the genre is so popular with the women.

Despite that to get the audience hooked into the movie the opening contains sensitive topics that dig into the audiences minds. Majority, of the audience, have probably been away from there loved ones for short or long period of time. The opening of love actually enables the audience to recall the emotions they felt when reuniting with there own loved one's feelings of excitement, joy, and happiness.

In addition to this diegetic music played in the background is very church like, soothing and peaceful.  The Light bell sounds connote weeding, love, and fondness. This further conforms the genre of the film because in all rom-com's it usually involves weddings and a happy ending.      

To introduce the theme of the movie there is a narrative 23 seconds in to the opening of the film who talks about love. The male’s voice that can be herd indicates that he could be one of the male protagonists as he is explaining about love from his viewpoint.  The paly on words used by the narrator in the ending of his speech/thought out his dialogue is very effective. This is because it makes the audience remember the title of the movie as it’s repeated multiple times.