Opening to Love Actually - Richard Curtis

Then we had to analyse another film opening and choose Love Actually, which uses the technique of a voiceover in the opening. The voice is of an English man (from recognising the voice and seeing the film before we know it is of Hugh Grant) talking about Love; "Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It 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 the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around." This automatically helps us to recognise the genre of the film and that the rest of the movie is going to be based around this emotion. It also makes us think and ask questions about why he is telling us this and introduces us into the movie in a different and interesting way. Overall I think this technique is good because it gets us interested in what is going to happen in rest of the film and ultimately that is what the opening should be all about.