Summary
Juliet watches Mark's footage from the wedding, gradually realizing that all of his footage is closeups of her. It slowly becomes clear that Mark is in love with Juliet, which is why he has been so cold to her. Mark leaves, awkwardly.
David calls his assistant, Annie, into his office and asks her to move Natalie from working for him. After Annie leaves, however, he looks heartbroken.
Daniel looks at a photo of his late wife at his desk, when Sam comes in and tells him that the girl he loves, Joanna, is going back to America. "That's the end of my life as I know it," he says. To comfort him, Daniel shows Sam Titanic. He tells Sam that there is never just one soulmate for a person, but Sam insists, "There was for Kate and Leo, there was for you." Daniel notes that Sam's crush has the same name as Sam's late mother.
Jamie drops Aurelia off for the last time. "I will miss you, and your very slow typing and your very bad driving," she tells him, before kissing him and leaving. As he drives away, Jamie gets in a fender bender.
We see Billy singing one of his horrible Christmas songs. Sam watches the performance on a television before going to Daniel and telling him that he wants to play in the band at the school concert to impress Joanna. When Daniel points out that Sam doesn't play an instrument, Sam begins learning to play the drums.
Harry's office has a Christmas party at Mark's gallery, which many of the characters attend. When Karen leaves Harry to make the rounds, Mia comes up and asks Harry to dance. He agrees, without mentioning that he is there with his wife. Karen watches as they dance, and Mia whispers to Harry that she has made herself look pretty just for him.
David watches television, and Billy is getting interviewed on a talk show. Billy says that if he reaches number one, he will perform a song naked on television on Christmas eve.
Back at the party, Karl asks Sarah to dance. They slow dance to a Norah Jones song. After the party, Sarah invites him to her apartment and they kiss passionately. She goes upstairs and prepares the bedroom, throwing a teddy bear under the bed, when Karl follows her up and they begin to undress. Suddenly, Sarah's cellphone rings and she answers, telling the person on the line that she isn't busy. She tells the person on the phone that it won't be possible to get the Pope on the phone that night. When she hangs up, she tells Karl that it was her brother, who is unwell and calls a lot.
They begin to kiss again, when the phone rings. Karl advises her not to answer the phone, suggesting that it won't make things any better. However, Sarah picks up the phone and tells her brother that she can come over and help.
At home, Karen and Harry get ready for bed and Karen mentions that Mia is very pretty. "Be careful there," Karen says. We then see Mia getting undressed at home.
Sarah visits her brother, who tells her that the nurses are trying to kill him. He goes to hit Sarah, when a nurse runs in and stops him. She holds his hands and tells him not to do that.
As Harry leaves work, Mia asks if he's going to buy her a Christmas present, and he notices that Sarah isn't there. After he leaves, he calls Mia and asks her if she's going to get him a present. "I thought I made it clear last night," she says, "When it comes to me you can have everything." She tells him she wants something special and pretty for Christmas, and he hangs up.
Harry then runs into Karen, meeting her to go Christmas shopping. When they separate at a department store, he goes to the jewelry department and buys a necklace that costs 270 pounds. The salesman takes a very long time to wrap the gift, much to Harry's chagrin. Suddenly Karen walks up and Harry pretends not to be buying jewelry, and she comments on the fact that he always buys her scarves anyway.
Analysis
In this section, larger conflicts begin to arise. After Juliet invites herself into Mark's home, she pops the wedding video into the VCR and slowly realizes that all of his footage is of her. The revelation that Mark is in love with his best friend's wife is a humiliating one, and Mark runs out of his house in sorrow, frightened that he has completely ruined his friendship and any potential for having a platonic connection with Juliet. Then, in the next scene, David has Natalie, the secretary to whom he has clearly taken a liking, fired. Rather than pursue her romantically, as he clearly wants to, he sends her away.
The film is very much a romantic comedy, tonally moving between the sentimental and the comic throughout. There is very little storytelling beyond that which concerns the alternately budding or dissolving relationships between the characters. The central question the viewer asks throughout is simply, "Will they get together in the end?" and a great deal of suspense is built around scenarios where it seems that love might be forever lost.
Even if the film is mainly focused on the romantic lives of the characters, there is a great deal of tragedy and sorrow sewn into the plot. Karen contends with the likely infidelity of her husband Harry, whom she sees flirting with his beautiful secretary at the Christmas party. Sarah, just when she finally falls into bed with the coworker she's pined for for months, finds herself having to go and care for a mentally ill brother, who suffers from delusions so strong that he is driven to almost strike her. As much as the film contends that love exists everywhere, director Richard Curtis does not shy away from depicting the limitations that are placed on love. In Sarah's story, we witness how her love for her brother, difficult though it may be, overwhelms her ability to love in other ways.
Christmas serves as a backdrop to all of the proceedings, which brings cheer and sentimentality to the narrative even when circumstances look grim. In spite of the obstacles the characters face, they still hang Christmas lights, attend parties, and purchase gifts for one another. Christmas is represented in the movie as a kind of balm for the more difficult parts of life, a holiday through which to feel connected to others even when connection seems difficult.
The score of the film is very present throughout. Hardly any scenes take place without background music, whether it is a Christmas song, a pop song, or something composed by the score writer, Craig Armstrong. The presence of music further streamlines the tone of the film, making it so that the viewer is told what to feel in each scene. In particularly sad scenes, we experience not only the emotions of the characters, but the emotion of the score, which heightens the drama.
