IMO he was only planning to - he never did. But his wife had every reason to be hurt.
I don’t know that he was even planning to. I think he just got caught up in the romance of that cute early stage of a relationship when you’re giving gifts like that and liked the idea that this younger woman found him attractive. Maybe he just wanted to give her the necklace and then walk away, but he got caught and had to explain himself. I think he really did think of himself as having been an idiot, but the damage was done.
I just don’t know how the younger woman felt. Was she really attracted to him or was she just playing him for her own amusement (and the nice necklace)?
Sharing that younger woman’s nationality, I have to say that she was genuinely attracted to him. She didn’t seem like the kind of scheming bitch who would just break up a marriage for kicks. Not a nice thing to do either way, but I believe she was really looking for affection, potentially from an older, more powerful father figure.
Interesting how the public opinion seems to be split almost 50/50 if Alan Rickman banged her or not. It just never occurred to me that he did.
As for time frames, a lot of things don’t really add up in that respect. Were they really shooting a porn movie for 4 weeks? Or was that maybe supposed to be multiple shoots?
Guy here. She didn’t come close to overreacting. The Alan Rickman character betrayed her in an egregious and callous fashion.
Another guy here, and no, Thompson’s character wasn’t overreacting. But I also didn’t think that Rickman and the hawt young assistant had actually had sex.
Keira Knightley fan that I am, I have to say I think she’s great in this movie. The boombox scene while her admirer flips cue cards to explain his feelings is just great.
Favorite line: When Emma T. calls her brother the Prime Minister, he takes the phone and says, “I’m sorry, I’m much too busy and important to talk to you right now.”
From the DVD directors’ commentary: in the scene where Emma T. is showing her husband Alan R. the two dolls, they were BOTH Ken dolls, with one of them in drag. Emma had to do several takes of the scene to get through it, she was laughing so hard.
Overreacting? No. She was both sympathetic and sensible. And, in the end, she convinced him to stay by simply being herself instead of resorting to yelling and threats.
I seem to remember a deleted scene in the extras that dialogue between the assistant and the owner of the gallery where the Xmas party was held. In it she is pretty openly trying to seduce her boss for her own amusement - the impression given was that is was a bit of a power thing for her and had little to do with any attraction. I’ll have to see if I can find the scene on my disc at home. Anyway, it made you a little more sympathetic to Rickman’s character that he was being manipulated by a bored hussy who apparently felt nothing for him. Makes the whole thing more pathetic.
I’m with** Elendil’s Heir,** no she wasn’t overreacting and no, they hadn’t actually got it together.
As I read it (and I’ve back-up on this from Mrs Marcus and Miss Marcus - the in-house experts) the scene with the necklace and the unmade bed was contrasting the secretary, alone in a grotty bed-sit at Christmas with only the necklace for company, with Alan Rickman and Emma Thomson with their children and family - relations strained but still together.
Was this deleted scene on the DVD? I don’t remember seeing it there.
As for this, I would be happy to sit through an extended version of the film with additional scenes restored.
Yes, the memories of Christmas past scene is on the DVD as one of the deleted scenes but most of the angel storyline was never filmed.
I remember the same explanation that Mrs. Cake laid out with the secretary, the studio scene is in the deleted scenes menu and the rest was in the Director’s commentary.
I love this movie.
From my view, Rickman definitely had sex with his assistant.
I also love this movie. I watch it every Christmas.
I always got more of a ‘shameless hussy’ vibe off the assistant than a ‘interested in boss’ one. To me she doesn’t look like she’s infatuated, it looks like attempted seduction. Her body language is very sexual but I don’t think loving. She deliberately meets his eyes and then opens her legs, purrs at him over the phone. I think she was playing power games.
I also didn’t think they slept together. After the party Emma and Alan are undressing for bed, and she tells him, 'Be careful there." He didn’t have time to sleep with her after the party, and I think the contrast between her putting on the necklace alone and the Rickman/Thompson family time together means he didn’t do it.
I have a friend who calls close friends ‘babe’ and ‘darling’. Laura Linney’s love was her brother. She seems very protective older sister.
Incidentally, Andrew Lincoln, who played Knightley’s lovelorn admirer, now plays the sheriff on The Walking Dead.
http://www.premiere.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/love-actually/576800-1-eng-US/Love-Actually.jpg
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/andrew-lincoln-rick-grimes-walking-dead.jpg
I love this movie, and have always presumed that there was, indeed, hanky panky going on. By giving in to a necklace, he was accepting an affair; there was nothing to indicate there WASN’T an affair going on. No overreaction; I actually was moved by the way it turned out, at the airport and all. It seems common and expected to explode and divorce over something like that; it was left with a ‘maybe, maybe not’ as far as things working out, and for some reason that was realistically <to me> refreshing bit of tale-telling.
Actually, Colin was a cater-waiter at the wedding; it’s there that he decides that the problem with him getting girls is because they’re all English and stuck up, and that he’d do much better in America. Which proves amusingly true; that was SUCH a corny, goofball subplot and it was awesome. 
“And he’s got a bit knooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooob…”
“Take me to an average bar. An average, American bar.”
It was awesome.
I thought the acting naked parts were body doubling, not porn. Neither of them looked porn-star-ish to me.
Of course they were body-doubling, but not for a family comedy, if you know what I mean. I was just wondering if the shooting of that film took all of 4-5 weeks.
Supposedly in the DVD commentary track, the director says that the stand-ins are doing so for a sexy mainstream movie, not a porn film.
I don’t think he was. He was one of the church guests playing a musical instrument, and he didn’t know tha the woman he was talking to was the caterer.
Yeah. Porn movies don’t have stand-ins for sex scenes, do they? It’d be a like a comedy having stand-ins for the main actors telling jokes.
Well, he was carrying a tray of food, which he offered to (the woman he didn’t know was) the caterer, before taking a piece himself and insulting the food. Is it common for guests at weddings to carry around trays of food? It’s common for servers not to meet the actual caterer when they work.