30. “Secretary” (2002)
“Fifty Shades Of Grey” took BDSM relationships mainstream, but a decade earlier, Steven Shainberg used them far more effectively, and romantically, with the oddly charming “Secretary.” Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a troubled young woman who gets the titular job working for an eccentric attorney (James Spader), who she soon realizes is sexually attracted to her submissiveness, although he’s somewhat ashamed by his own predilections. With an almost fable-like tone and oddly screwball sense of humor, it’s a curiously joyous celebration of the kinks and peccadilloes that can bring us together, performed beautifully by its two leads whose very curious chemistry fizzes on the screen.
29. “Goodbye First Love” (2011)
Still just 36, Mia Hansen-Løve has always been a filmmaker with maturity beyond her years, whether looking at grief in early middle age with “The Father Of My Children,” the refusal to grow up with “Eden,” or late middle age with “Things To Come.” But perhaps her most raw and personal film came with her look at the first flush of romance with the very personal “Goodbye First Love.” Told over three timeframes, it follows 15-year-old Camille (Lola Créton), who is deeply in love with the young Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), but knows that he’s going to be off traveling in South America within a few months. Low in event but high in unfiltered emotion, it’s messier and scrappier than some of Hansen-Løve’s other films, but the lack of control somehow feels utterly appropriate for the level of hormones flying around, and it makes it something utterly recognizable as far as coming-of-age love stories go.
28. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000)
Still the highest-grossing foreign-language title of all time domestically, Ang Lee‘s sweeping, swooping, soaring martial-arts love-story epic is as close to a blockbuster as this list gets. Featuring an all-star cast of Zhang Ziyi, Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, it’s a thrilling romance featuring treetop battles, unspoken passions and ultimate sacrifices that introduced an entire generation of non-Chinese moviegoers to the wuxia genre and opened the floodgates for a torrent of others to come. But for all its breathtaking fight sequences, it’s the passionate affair of youth between Ziyi and bandit Chang Chen, and the desperately unrequited romance between Yun-fat and Yeoh, that linger longest.
27. “Only Lovers Left Alive” (2013)
Jim Jarmusch’s penchant for dabbling in genre is always exciting and layered — take “Ghost Dog”’s gangster, hip-hop and comedy movie tropes, or “The Limits of Control,” probably the world’s only deadpan, surrealist assassin meditation. And so while it’s superficially a movie about hipster vampires, his “Only Lovers Left Alive” explores almost everything on his mind at the time, including long-term relationships, cultural decay, snobbery, art and legacy. The riches of this exquisite film are myriad; somehow it’s wry and self-reflexive about what constitutes “cool” while being achingly romantic about the meaning of love, and melancholy in its observations of the erosion of art and civilization all at the same time.
26. “Amelie” (2001)
Whimsy is a fine line to walk without becoming unbearable — just look at the trailer for this apparent monstrosity, which is clearly indebted to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amelie,” and see how badly it can go wrong. But somehow, for all its quirk and stylization, Jeunet’s original remains a delight. The almost novelistic story of a shy waitress trying to improve the lives of those around her while falling for a mysterious young man, it’s a love letter to Paris, to love itself, and to Audrey Tautou’s face, but always brings in just enough darkness or humanity to stop it collapsing like empty choux pastry. She’d probably be an annoying person to actually know, but she’s a wonderful one to watch.
25. “Away From Her” (2006)
Love in the twilight years has become big box office in recent years, with Judi Dench and Helen Mirren being more reliable rom-com leaders than actresses half their age. But the best, saddest and most moving late-in-life love story came from a young director, the then-27-year-old Sarah Polley, with her directorial debut “Away From Her.” Adapted from a short story by Alice Munro, it’s focused on a long-married couple, Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (Julie Christie), who are devastated when Fiona is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. But the worst is still to come: when Fiona moves into a home, she forgets her husband and falls in love with a mute man in the same facility. It’s a desperately sad story, done with wisdom that belies Polley’s age (she adapted the script too) and acted beautifully (Christie was rightly Oscar-nominated), and ends on a note of not-quite-hope that can’t fail to make you burst into tears.
24. “Pariah” (2011)
Dee Rees was the talk of Sundance this year with her period drama “Mudbound,” which was snapped up by Netflix in a big-money deal and looks sure to be an awards contender this time next year. Hopefully it makes more people check out her gorgeous debut “Pariah,” which never quite found the audience it deserved. Following the gradual coming to terms with her sexual identity of 17-year-old Alike (Adepero Oduye in an astonishing performance) as she falls for a girl from her church, it’s stark but never bleak, beautifully filmed (by future “Arrival” DP Bradford Young) and performed, and deeply felt at every level. In some ways, it’d make a great double-bill partner for “Moonlight.”
23. “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012)
Wes Anderson had included love stories in his films — the triangle in “Rushmore,” the awkward semi-incestuous pairing in “The Royal Tenenbaums” — but had never made it a focus until “Moonrise Kingdom.” And the wait was worth it. A sort of pre-teen take on the lovers-on-the-lam genre, it follows young Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, recently reunited delightfully in “Paterson”), on a New England island in 1965, who flee into the wilderness together, sparking a massive manhunt. It’s as charming and whimsical as Anderson’s other films, but somehow a little harder-edged too, with the two characters containing a rebellious anger that’s relatively rare for the director. With any justice, their affair will live alongside Bonnie & Clyde and Mickey & Mallory in cinema history.
22. “Weekend” (2011)
The breakthrough feature for Andrew Haigh, the man who’d go on to bring us “Looking” and the sublime “45 Years,” “Weekend” is on the surface a sort of gay take on the “Before Sunrise”-style picture, following a one-night stand between two men (Tom Cullen and Chris New), which turns into several life-changing days. It’s unabashed about the specific issues that gay men face, but its more overarching concern is how two strangers can affect one another indelibly, and how in the midst of the bustle and noise of life, all unexpectedly, love can happen. It may not be a lasting, forever-type love, perhaps it’s simply a moment of sudden, stunning connection, but that is not really Haigh’s concern. He seems more powerfully interested in the inner revolutions that an encounter of such mutual resonance can spark: revelations of the most profoundly personal kind.
21. “Bright Star” (2009)
Still underrated nearly eight years after its release (despite Quentin Tarantino, not exactly its target audience, calling it his favorite film of that year), Jane Campion’s beautiful, understated drama deserves revisiting. The film tells the story of the chaste, thwarted romance between Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish, who deserved to become roughly ten times more famous than she is now off the back of this) and poet John Keats, which never comes to fruition due to his death at the age of 25. With a freshness and vitality that’s rare for the period drama, it sees Campion (and DP Greig Fraser) infuse every frame with the spirit of Keats’ work, while the two performers act as if though everyone and everything else in the world disappears when they’re together. A film that was simply too good to find a large audience.