Seven films about love

Except maybe not always in the way you'd imagine...

Listen, this is a very shameless post, written last minute when I realised with some urgency that another Valentines day had come around and my crush has still not become my bae.

Jokes aside, as much as I am a very particular sort of person who finds little sentimentality in the things I do and the people I engage with, I am a funky little romantic at heart, and I love a good film about love. So much so that I’m going to tell you about seven of them I think are rather special.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Maybe Orpheus had no choice but to look back at Euridice? Maybe that was the only way he could save her?

Celine Schiamma’s brilliant tale of doomed romance and quiet protest draws me back to it time and time again because it captures this almost paradoxical element of love being extremely specific but also universal.

It presents the idea of the wrong time and the wrong place drafting this lingering pain, not of loss necessarily, but of absence, of being stretched far beyond either person’s reach and forever haunted for it.

Star crossed lovers is nothing new, not now, not then, but there is an entire cosmos to be found in the performances of Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, which coupled with the film’s electric editing, makes this feel unlike anything I’ve seen before or since.

Decision to Leave

I initially put this in the list as a sort of joke, but to be honest, who hasn’t found themselves tortured by an unhealthy infatuation with the wrong person? Rendered speechless and brain-shrunk by mysterious beauty, to the degree that you take leave of your senses and ruin your own life.

I know its not love in the traditional sense, even if it is somewhat requited in that typically twisted Park Chan Wook kind of way, but Decision to Leave captures this phenomenon beautifully, in a way that makes the rottenness of its coda all the more malicious.

Ponyo

I don’t think there’s a better film about young love out there. A young boy discovers a free spirited girl one day, one who just so happens to be heir to the ocean, but we won’t dwell on that. A friendship blooms that you know will exist until the end of time, a love so pure and honest you can’t help but be charmed by it.

Plus, you wouldn’t believe how much of a wife guy Ponyo’s dad is, and when you finally see her, you get it. What a woman!

The Apartment

There’s a version of love that makes you feel nothing but grief. One that makes all your decisions for you, for better or worse. And then there’s a love that makes you brave. Makes you realize that you need to stand up for yourself and challenge the wicked ways of the world around you.

This is the love at the heart of The Apartment, evoked brilliantly by its leads Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine. A tale of misadventure, of cowardly men gambling on the lonliness of young women who deserve so much more. It was made in 1960. It feels staggeringly modern.

Three Colours Red

The Three Colours Trilogy is crammed with really fascinating depictions of love: Grief, jealousy, brotherhood. It’s a remarkable collection of stories about the human condition, but for me, its the relationship that blossoms between Valentine and The Judge in Red that stands out the most.

Something clearly existing between platonic and romantic, feelings quickly drummed up from a chance encounter, spurring both people on to take stock of their lives past and present, it’s a stunning portrait of kinship that remains pure in spite of the messiness of the world that surrounds these two characters.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Joel and Clementine are perhaps the most realistic depiction of a bad couple I’ve seen on screen. Their interactions are toxic, a drama addiction spiral that gets so bad that Joel feels compelled to erase his own memory of her, even the parts that prove that he’s partially to blame for how things ended up.

But memories are never entirely sour. There are reasons why people come together in the first place, even if they shouldn’t remain that way for their own good. It’s a bittersweet portrait of a complex romantic relationship that reckons with the collaborative nature of a break up in a way that feels strikingly real, despite the abstract and nearly fantastical way it’s portrayed here.

Hanna

Hanna is not necessarily a romantic film. It’s the story of a young girl raised by her father to be an assassin, on the run from bad men and in pursuit of a woman she’s been trained her entire life to kill. But its portrayal of love is really interesting, as an idea that cannot be beaten out of a person, nor hidden from them as they develop and grow.

Nothing showcases this more than Hanna’s encounter with Sophie, and the friendship that immediately blossoms. Part of what’s so striking about these scenes is the intimacy of the camera work, they really want you to exist there in the moment with these two girls.

But even on a conceptual level its really fascinating to come to a social situation with only a theoretical comprehension of what to say or do and still find yourself drawn to another person immediately. Some people just really click in that way.

Also an honorable mention goes to Tom Hollander’s unbelievable wardrobe in this film. That’s another kind of love alltogether.