A lesbian love story was deleted from Love, Actually.

For the 12th year running, think-pieces about how Love, Actually is the work of the devil have begun making the rounds.

There’s nothing new: Love, Actually is the “apex of cynically vacant faux-motional cash-grab garbage cinema”. It is “the least romantic film of all-time”. It is “hate, actually”.

The definitive feel-good Christmas rom-com is a scourge on society and must be eradicated, apparently.

Perhaps if the film’s many critics (which cannot outnumber its fans, hence it screening every single Christmas without fail) had seen this deleted scene, they’d feel a little more kindly towards it.

See, there were three scenes that got cut from the final edit of the movie, a touching story about an older lesbian couple.

In the cut scene, an stern-looking headmistress (played by Anne Reid) returns home to her cancer-stricken partner (Frances de la Tour). (Post continues after gallery.)

Director Richard Curtis said of the idea behind the couple: “The idea was meant to be you just casually met this very sort of stern headmistress and the idea was meant to be that later on in the film we suddenly fell in with the headmistress and you realise that no matter how unlikely it seems, that any character you come across in life has their own complicated tale of love.”

In the end, Emma Thompson’s character reveals at a school concert that the headmistress has recently lost her partner.

It is, in the way of Love, Actually, bittersweet and emotionally manipulative. Enjoy!