Lust actually
A foolish man who spoke terrible Portuguese once said:
“Beautiful Aurelia, I’ve come here with a view of asking you to marriage me… And I will inhabit here, or you can inhabit with me in England.”
And the world called it love.
What a crock of shit.
For a film that promises love, actually, it sure doesn’t show us a whole lot of it. Now, before you come for me with pitchforks, I’ll have it known that I adore this movie. I’m especially a fan of Hugh Grant’s dancing scene (though let’s be honest, we all are). But that’s not the point of this piece.
Nearly every depiction of “love” in this film is actually lust – or longing, or escapism, or fantasy dressed up as fate. We’ve used moments like these to glamourise some genuinely backwards situations, held them up as proof that love conquers all, when really they’re just showing us that wanting something badly enough apparently makes it romance. There’s one glaringly awkward exception that actually demonstrates love, and she’s the only person who ends up alone. Everyone else just gets to want something and call it profound.
Look, I know it’s a movie. I’m not expecting Richard Curtis to turn Love Actually into a three-hour masterclass on attachment theory and the neuroscience of desire (even though I’d be keen to watch it). Films need pace, need drama, need moments that punch you in the feelings. I get it. And I genuinely love this film – watch it every December without fail, know half the dialogue by heart, still get a little misty when the music swells (and I still get anxious when Mr. Bean is packaging up the necklace).
A quick insight: I was sixteen when this came out. I absorbed every frame of it as blueprint. This was what romance looked like. This was what love was supposed to feel like. The grand gestures, the chasing, the intensity of wanting someone so badly it overrode everything else – that was the gold standard.
And now, years into this work, a not-insignificant portion of my job involves untangling the difference between love and lust in the minds of people who learned from films exactly like this one. People who think if it doesn’t feel like Mark’s cue cards or Jamie’s airport proposal, it’s not real. People who’ve mistaken adrenaline for compatibility, secrecy for depth, wanting for devotion.
So yes, it’s just a movie. But it’s also a manual we didn’t realise we were studying.
Mark and Juliet
Mark spends an entire wedding filming only Juliet’s face. Not the ceremony, not the couple – just her. Then shows up weeks later at her door with cue cards professing his love. She’s married to his best friend. Has been for three weeks (cue: awkward turtle 🐢).
Adults are complicated. We make decisions based on fleeting emotions, acting on feelings we mistake for clarity when really we’re just flooded with adrenaline and want. She kisses him because she feels seen, feels wanted, and wants to give something back. He confesses because he needs the release, needs to say it out loud even if it detonates everything.
That’s human. But it’s not romance.
Romance respects boundaries. Romance is mutual, reciprocal, something you can receive in daylight. This is a transaction wrapped in secrecy, a feeling we’ve labelled romantic because of the intensity – the anticipation, the risk, the forbidden nature of it all. These are the ingredients of lust, not love. They drive want, not devotion.
The film sells us the feeling and asks us to mistake it for something deeper. But keeping secrets from the person you just married isn’t romance. It’s just messy. And we’ve been taught to find the mess intoxicating.
The Prime Minister and Natalie
The American President sexually harasses Natalie. The Prime Minister witnesses it and responds with jealousy, not concern. So he has her transferred, demoted essentially, because he can’t regulate his own feelings like an adult.
She did nothing wrong. She was harassed. And she’s the one who loses her job because he’s too emotionally immature to keep her in the role she was hired for.
Then Christmas Eve arrives and instead of accountability – a conversation about why he had her moved, an apology for making his feelings her professional problem – he shows up at her house with charm and state-backed persistence. No emotional labour. No repair. Just a grand gesture that sweeps everything under the rug.
This is lust avoiding the hard work. The feelings are mutual, sure. But romance without accountability isn’t romance. It’s just someone choosing the path of least resistance and getting rewarded for it.
Jamie and Aurélia
Jamie walks in on his girlfriend sleeping with his brother and flees to France where he falls for the woman who cleans his cottage. They share maybe five words between them. The film treats this as charming.
He learns enough Portuguese to propose in front of her entire family on Christmas Eve. She says yes. Everyone claps.
But he knows nothing about her. Not her dreams, her fears, how she handles conflict, what she’s running from. She’s beautiful and kind and can’t challenge him because they don’t share language.
This isn’t love. This is a man so terrified of being hurt again that he’s chosen someone he can’t fully know. She can’t betray him the way his ex did because he’s never given her enough words to do damage with. He’s swapped one fantasy for another. Three weeks of broken conversation and he’s ready to uproot his life. That’s not devotion. That’s avoidance with a phrasebook.
Harry and Karen
Karen finds an expensive necklace in Harry’s coat, assumes it’s for her. At the Christmas party, she sees his secretary wearing it. That bedroom scene where she plays Joni Mitchell and quietly falls apart is the most honest moment in this film. This is what betrayal actually looks like – not explosive, just a woman realising she’s been replaced while trying not to let her children hear her cry.
Here’s what we don’t know: their relationship before this moment. Whether they’d discussed boundaries around emotional intimacy with colleagues. Whether this crosses a line they’d agreed on or one she’s just discovered exists. The film gives us her devastation and asks us to fill in the rest, which is a disaster when sixteen-year-olds are watching and learning what constitutes betrayal without any context for the complexity underneath.
What we do know is this: something broke that night. The film doesn’t tell us if they stay together – we see them at the airport later, but Emma Thompson’s face throughout suggests she’s just existing in it rather than choosing it. Whether she stays or goes, that bedroom moment tells us everything. Whatever repair might be possible would require him to actually do something – acknowledge the damage, sit in the discomfort, rebuild trust through years of consistent action.
We see none of that. Just ambiguity. Just her carrying on because sometimes that’s easier than the alternative, whether you’re staying in the marriage or just making it through Christmas for the kids.
The film doesn’t call this anything. But we shouldn’t call it romance.
And then there’s Colin flying to America to solve his inadequacy with geography, Daniel letting his grieving stepson breach airport security for a kiss, John and Judy’s quirky naked courtship that we’re supposed to find pure – all of it selling us the feeling of want and asking us to mistake it for something deeper.
Here’s what I’m not saying: don’t watch Love Actually. Don’t enjoy it. Don’t get swept up in the feeling of it all, because feelings matter and joy matters and sometimes you just need Emma Thompson crying to Joni Mitchell to validate your own heartbreak.
What I am saying is this: enjoy it, but know what you’re watching. Know that it’s selling you lust dressed as love, want packaged as devotion, and that the difference between those things will make or break your actual relationships.
Lust is the feeling. The rush, the obsession, the can’t-eat-can’t-sleep intensity of wanting someone. It’s intoxicating. It’s supposed to be. That’s biology doing its job, flooding you with chemicals designed to make you pursue.
Love is what happens after that fades. It’s the choice you make when your partner’s annoying you and you choose kindness anyway. It’s showing up for the unsexy conversations about money and boundaries and whose turn it is to deal with the thing neither of you wants to deal with. It’s staying when the feeling isn’t there to carry you.
Lust asks: what do I want? Love asks: what do we need?
And films like this – beautiful, enjoyable, rewatchable films like this – train us to chase the former and call it the latter. They teach us that if it doesn’t feel like fireworks and airport chases and declarations on doorsteps, it’s not real love. That the mundane, daily choice of each other isn’t as valid as the high of pursuing someone new.
I’ve sat across from countless people who’ve built entire relationships on lust and then wondered why it all collapsed when real life showed up. Who’ve chased the feeling instead of building the foundation. Who’ve mistaken intensity for intimacy, secrecy for depth, wanting for actually knowing someone.
So watch the film. Enjoy the film. Let Hugh Grant dance across your screen every Christmas. But when you’re building your actual life, your actual relationships, remember: Sarah’s the only one who got it right. She showed love in action, and ultimately the movie chose to then show her alone because of it.
That should tell you everything you need to know about what we’ve been taught to value.
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