The 50 Best Romantic Films Of The 21st Century So Far - Page 4 of 5

beginners20. “Beginners” (2010)
If the recent (and equally wonderful) “20th Century Women” was a love-letter to Mike Mills’ mother, “Beginners” served the same purpose to his father, who came out as gay late in life. Mills uses that a springing off point for this playful, warm, wonderful film that tells both the parallel stories of Hal (an Oscar-winning Christopher Plummer) as he finds love with a younger man (Goran Visnjic) and embraces his sexuality, and Mills surrogate Oliver (Ewan McGregor), inspired by his father to pursue a romance with a French actress (an almost literally luminous Melanie Laurent). What might in other hands be unbearable whimsy (a talking dog!) here all feels in service of the whole, and Mills captures the joys of falling in love, and the heartbreak that follow, better than most.

head_on19. “Head-On” (2004)
Winning director Fatih Akin the Golden Bear at Berlin at the age of just 31, “Head-On” is a spiky, ever-unexpected film that take the romantic comedy and twists it into new territory that feels, even a decade on, hugely exciting to watch. It sees suicidal, addiction-plagued Turkish German man Cahit (Biron Unel) committed to a psychiatric clinic, where he marries a woman, Sibil (Sibil Kekilli, who’d later find fame as Shae on “Game Of Thrones”) so she can escape her conservative family. They live as platonic roommates, for a while, only to fall in love, and then Cahit kills one of her ex-lovers and is sent to prison… Punctuated with bursts of violence and driven by a need to show the mistreatment of women, it’s nevertheless a film with a strange romanticism, and feels influential on films beyond the arthouse audience it initially attracted, including “Silver Linings Playbook” for one .

Rachel Weisz and Collin Farrell in'The Lobster'

18. “The Lobster” (2015)
The idea of the man behind “Dogtooth” telling a love story seemed like an unlikely one, and even for most of the first half of his brilliant English-language debut “The Lobster,” it feels like Yorgos Lanthimos has delivered the opposite — a film about the oppressive need for society to force you into relationships. But in its second half, as Colin Farrell’s David escapes to a community of singletons, only to fall for Rachel Weisz’s Shortsighted Woman, it shows itself to be something else. Not just a film about the hypocrisies of systems, but also a strangely sweet love story, with Farrell and Weisz acting out a secret courtship through a secret language and stolen glances. It’s one of the best movies about relationships in living memory, right up to its Rorschach test of an ending.

tabu-miguel-gomes17. “Tabu” (2012)
His recent “Arabian Nights” trilogy might have been his magnum opus, but to us, Portuguese helmer Miguel Gomes’ masterpiece is “Tabu,” a black-and-white tribute to/pastiche of F.W. Murnau’s film of the same name that tells the story of an elderly woman in Lisbon, and then her romance in Africa 50 years earlier. The first half is principally set-up, but the second is something truly gorgeous: a swooning, sexy postcolonial Romantic tragedy with a sly sense of humor and a great soundtrack. If, as ever with Gomes, there’s a rich level of irony and distance in the form, it only loosely disguises a rich vein of feeling underneath.

la-la-land-ryan-gosling,-emma-stone16. “La La Land” (2016)
You might have gone into “La La Land,” with all the hype and its near-unprecedented number of Oscar nominations, expecting a giant, lavish Hollywood musical. But that’s not quite what Damien Chazelle gives you — for all the song and dance, it’s a modest film, more “Like Crazy” than “An American In Paris” in many respects. But that intimacy only makes it work better for us — it’s a tightly-focused story of a struggling actress (Emma Stone) and a driven jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) who are in love but find life and work getting in the way, and it strikes a nerve to anyone who’s ever had similar problems in a relationship. And plenty more who haven’t, too: the final medley, as they tour the life that they never had together, has left audiences sobbing in recognition.

wall-e

15. “Wall-E”
Short of a comeback (which we hope is still to come), the peak of Pixar looks to have been in the late 00s, when the company knocked out classic after classic either side of the occasional lousy “Cars” movie. But their boldest move, even more so than an old man on a strange adventure or a rat that can cook, was making a swooning, beautifully achieved romantic comedy that happened to be about a boxy robot who falls in love with a fancy iPod-type machine. And despite neither Wall-E nor EVE being able to speak dialogue, it’s one of our favorite romances in recent cinema. Indebted to silent cinema in its early goings, the bond between the two is hard-won, and carries the film even through its radically different, slightly less good second half. Not that we encourage Pixar to make any more sequels, but we do kind of want to see what their robo-kids would look like…

far-from-heaven

14. “Far From Heaven” (2002)
Consciously made in the style, and with the look of, a 1950s Douglas Sirk studio melodrama, it would have been so easy for “Far From Heaven” to fall into pastiche. But Todd Haynes is a far better filmmaker than that. Set in suburban Connecticut in 1957, it sees housewife Cathy (Julianne Moore), reeling from the revelation that her husband (Dennis Quaid) has been exploring his sexuality, finding solace with her African-American gardener (Dennis Haysbert), but the racism of the time prevents them from ever being together. Haynes lets himself go places that Sirk never could have done, but the lush, brightly colored look of the film still serves as a prison for the characters in so many ways. By its end, you know it could never be described as pastiche, but pastiche could never move you like this does.

35-shots-of-rum

13. “35 Shots Of Rum” (2009)
To describe Claire Denis’ “35 Shots Of Rum” as just a love story would in some ways be reductive: it’s a rich and layered piece of work that is focused as much on family, in a way that’s reminiscent of Ozu, as it is on its characters romantic lives. But Claire Denis’ film does certainly function, somewhat in the margins, as a love story too. The focus is on Lionel (Alex Descas) and his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop), a loving and devoted pairing that is almost to the exclusion of anything else, but over the course of the film begins to fray thanks to Noé (Gregoire Colin), a young neighbor with feelings for Josephine. In a rather more coherent style than some of the films that had preceded it from Denis, it tackles a universal truth — that one day your children will leave the nest — and does so with both real warmth and charm, and with a deep sense of melancholy.

talk-to-her

12. “Talk To Her” (2004)
At least for a long time, Pedro Almodovar doesn’t do love stories, or at least pure love stories. That “Talk To Her,” a film about two men in obsessive love with comatose women, is the closest thing he’s done recently only hammers that home. It tells the story of journalist Marco (Dario Grandinetti) whose affair with female matador Lydia (Rosario Flores) ended when she was gored and put into a coma, and Benigno (Javier Camara), a nurse obsessed with a dance student (Leonor Watling) who’s been unconscious for three years. Rich, unexpected and formally playful, it has an unusual focus on men for an Almodovar film, and shows both the innocence and the toxicity of devoted love, throwing tragedy or sinister intentions at you just as you think you have it figured out. In an extraordinary career, this still makes an argument for being one of the director’s very best films.

duke-of-burgundy

11. “The Duke Of Burgundy” (2014)
A significant step up for director Peter Strickland even from his excellent previous movie “Berberian Sound Studio,” “The Duke Of Burgundy” is set in a world seemingly without men, and focuses on the relationship between Evelyn (Chiarra D’Anna) and Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), two lepidopterologists (scientists studying butterflies) who are deeply in love but are increasingly strained by Evelyn’s highly submissive sexual tastes. Which might make it sound intimidating and unrelatable, but one of the film’s many pleasures is the way that it makes a seemingly extreme situation utterly relatable and deeply moving. Strip away its gorgeous design and more expressionistic elements, and you’ll find a deceptively sly, sexy and playful picture, an impossibly tender love story beautifully performed by its two leads, and which tackles universal truths in the most specific way imaginable.