The Best Movies About Love: From Comedies to Dramas
Love is so different, and everyone has their own kind of love. Sensual, tender, the first one, the only one, overwhelming, overpowering, and even killing love. It is an endless source of inspiration for creative people who devote their films, songs, and paintings to this feeling. This theme will always resonate with the audience since it’s familiar and close to everyone’s feelings.
In this article, I have gathered movies of different genres for you. Each of them has its own incredible story – a sensual and insightful one that you can relive again and again with the main characters while watching.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004
Michel Gondry directed a weird and wonderful romantic drama of all time. The film’s main protagonists are Joel (Jim Carrey), a quiet and isolated man, and Clementine (Kate Winslet), an impulsive young lady who loves to do silly things and dye her hair bright colors. They met on a train, and it seems to be the first time, but – no. They have forgotten each other as if someone has erased their love memories.
The film shows the characters in different realities simultaneously: in the present, in the memory, and the recollection of the memory. They wander through the world of memories and dreams, losing and finding each other.
It is an extraordinary film about ordinary people. About the one who couldn’t quit drinking and the one who didn’t want to take his eyes off the TV screen, believing it would teach her a lesson about her
alcoholism. This movie is about all of us who didn’t find the courage and strength to hold each other in our arms, not letting go forever.
In the Mood for Love, 2000
The film tells the story of doomed love. In the 1960s in Hong Kong, two couples move into different rooms of the same communal flat. Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) works in a print shop, and Mrs. Zhang (Maggie Cheung) works in a travel agency as a secretary. One day they realize that their loved ones are cheating on them with each other…
Is there an excuse for cheating? What would you do if you found out your significant other was cheating? There is no answer to that question in a film built on understatement, essential minutiae, and fine details. Touching music, dragging, mesmerizing scenes, impeccable costumes, and loneliness. The clicking of high heels, shy stolen glances, raindrops in an ode of tenderness from Wong Kar-Wai. The magic of light and shadow in the film only strengthens the overall impression of the movie, where each shot is a piece of art that one wants to admire endlessly.
Her, 2003
A gem among plots where everything happens is a metaphor for the relationship between a man and a woman. The film is set in the not-too-distant future. The movie’s main character, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), divorced from his wife, remains utterly apathetic to the world around him. He expresses all the emotions that swirl inside him by writing letters to strangers, which is his profession. At some point, he decides to buy an operating system designed to help him in everything, installs a female voice on it, and his life changes from that moment. Samantha, that’s the name of this OS, speaks with the Scarlett Johansson voice and is endowed with human intelligence and the ability for self-development, which makes her the perfect interlocutor. Gradually, the protagonist falls in love with his virtual friend and builds a relationship with her. But, even such a controlled romance can sooner or later break out of the boundaries of the ideal scenario; it can deceive expectations, hurt, and offend. The professional and talented work of the movie’s creators makes it one of those movies that you can watch many times, constantly discovering something new for yourself.
Reconstruction, 2003
The psychological drama by Danish director Christopher Boe won several awards, including one at the Cannes Film Festival for a best feature-length film debut. The director has chosen a mosaic narrative approach, putting three or four versions of what is happening simultaneously. Throughout the film, Boe uses the voice-over to keep reminding viewers that they are watching a movie, with the fantastic effect of keeping the audience in an undisturbed sleep, allowing them to think and project the relationships depicted in the film into their reality. The film is based on a love square: the first couple is the photographer Alex and his girlfriend, Simone. The second couple is the writer August, who has come to Copenhagen to give some lectures, and his wife Ame – their relationship is strained.
The man walks into a bar and sees a beautiful woman – do they know each other? Not likely… So is it a one-night stand or something more, the beginning or the end? The movie is easy to watch despite the constant flashbacks and replaying of situations, where each new episode ends with another “love test.”
It’s a stunning movie, where each frame shows the meticulous work of the authors: fantastic music, smoothly passing from jazz classics to Schubert piano sonata, delicate camerawork, and beautiful actors’ performance.
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