On Cue-Card Guy.

Film The Atlantic has a well researched column by Megan Garber about how refracted through another prism, the behaviour of the male characters in some romcoms is that of the sexual predator. Somewhat inevitably but it needs to be said:
"The cue-card guy in Love Actually—his character is so roughly sketched that he is generally and correctly known simply as Cue-Card Guy—shows up at the door of his beloved, while her husband sits watching TV, to confess his love. There he is, at her home, without, the cards say, “hope or expectation,” for the purpose of … what? Confusing her? Making her feel good about herself? Convincing her that she should totally leave his best friend for her? Using her so that he may, himself, get some much-needed romantic closure?

"It’s unclear—opacity is the defining characteristic of Cue-Card Guy—but the movie suggests that it is probably the latter of these: “Enough,” Cue-Card Guy says to himself as he’s walking away from her house, “Silent Night” still blaring on his Doblerian boombox, having successfully passed his romantic frustrations on to the woman who is their object. “Enough now.”
Not to mention the number of romcoms in which the male character does something aggressively appauling to the woman who quite rightly moves on and then, what was up to that point a relatively balanced narrative in which both characters have agency, becomes about him trying to win her back, she becoming little more than object in an metaphoric/emotional recreation of the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost arc.

And yes, I'm entirely aware that my favourite film of all time, When Harry Met Sally, somewhat does this, including the run against time and the big speech.  But in that case neither character is really right or wrong, I don't think and Sally still keeps her agency.  Plus the film in general is about friendship rather than romance and you get the feeling that even if they were to divorce later they'd still remain friends.  Or rather that they get married because they're stuck together.

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