Top 7 - My Favourite Romance Films
Why I'm doing this review in the middle of June may seem like a bit of a mystery to you. We're four months gone since Valentine's Day, that's the only time to talk about love in cinema, right? Well, not for me. Not only are we in a week when I do not want to see the new Men in Black film, we're also at the time of year when the Before trilogy are set, as well as being a week since I re-watched those films. It's made me realise that while I have little interest in typically romantic genres like rom-coms, musicals or period dramas, romance on film can be one of my very favourite films. Quick rule check, I'm prioritising films where romance is the core push of the film, meaning that I have sadly cut films like La La Land and Vertigo. So as I sit here, depressingly alone as always, lit by the screen of my laptop, let's countdown the best films that depict romance, be it soaringly positive or crushingly negative.
7. If Beale Street Could Talk
First on our list is the most recent film of the bunch, from director of Moonlight Barry Jenkins, a man who already proved he knows a thing about romance. Where Moonlight was more of a journey of self-discovery in which romance played a key role, If Beale Street Could Talk is pure romance, through and through. It's the story of Fonnie and Tish, a young couple living in New York who, after growing up together, slowly begin to realise that the love they feel for each other runs deeper than just friendship. It flashes back and forward from when they're falling in love to when Fonnie is imprisoned and Tish must try and fight for his innocence. The combination of these two things offers an incredible melancholy, as the soaring heights of love are contrasted with the lows that come from being forcibly separated. Primarily though, the reasons the film work as well as they do are the cinematography from James Laxton that puts us in the centre of their world and Nicholas Britell's score, that breaks my heart every time I listen to it. Everything in the film is brilliant but these two things elevate it and puts it on this list.
6. Carol
It's always those romances that are most impossible that have the most hold on me, a trend we're going to see throughout this list because I am apparently an especially sad human being. Anyway, Carol is one of those stories, in which the impossibilities come from many things; the age gap, Carol's marriage, the tabboo nature of lesbianism in the fifties. Because of this, there is a pit in the bottom of our stomachs because we know this relationship can't last, won't last. And yet, you can't help but fall in love too. Todd Haynes has made some weird films in his time (Safe especially is very odd) but he is entirely earnest with his approach to this love story. I feel myself skating around any of the actual substance here but that's only because it has a mysticism that is hard to grasp. To describe it would be to de-romanticise it and I couldn't do that to such an enrapturing film. Just go seek out Carol, you probably haven't seen it but you should.
5. Brief Encounter
With Brief Encounter, we have the prototype for many of the films on this list and I'm ashamed to say it has taken me until this year to see it. Since then though, it has stuck with me potently. It's the story of a brief encounter (get it?) between two people who bump into each other at a train station and start to fall in love. It can't last of course but that is what makes their love so strong. David Lean is most famous for epics like Doctor Zhivago or Laurence of Arabia but instead of going large, Lean leans into the smaller moments. The way characters look at each other when they're in the company of those who know them, the attempts to bargain with fate, how words can say more than the words actually mean; it is all captured incredibly. Plus, it has an energy that many don't usually associate with old films, putting many modern efforts to shame. Of all the films on the list, this is probably the film you're least likely to have seen just because of its age but I can't stress how much its elegance will convert you. In a time when the second world war was tearing the world apart, audiences were given a beautiful love story to escape into and today, it holds up just as well.
4. Her
From here on, these are all 10/10 films, films that enrapture me and even start to define who I am and how I interact with the world. With Her, when I first saw it about five years ago, it impressed me with an honest look at love in a world that felt as if it was only months away. Since then, I have sat with it, experienced a romantic relationship myself and watched the world move closer and closer to the world Theodore inhabits. And then I rewatched it a few months ago. And it swept me away more than it had before. See, in 2014, the idea of someone falling in love with their operating system because of how lonely they are seemed possible but unlikely. Now? It seems more than possible. In the spirit of honesty, I often think about what I would do if the possibility were given to me. Maybe I would fall in love with an AI, because it can't be more difficult than falling in love with a human. Whether I would or not, what Her does is presents, without judgement, a glimpse of a society that, in bringing people closer together, has only torn us further apart. It doesn't sound implausible today but Her only succeeds because that love story at its core feels so true. It is what makes that glimpse at our near future so realistic.
3. Call Me By Your Name
Here we are, the film I loved so much that my housemates are still convinced I'm gay, Call Me By Your Name is another LGBT love story that is also a film about fleeting romance. Elio, a teenager living in Italy, meets student Oliver, coming to study with his father for the summer. This film's romance feels especially strong because of how closely it is linked to that feeling of summer. Even if we haven't all experienced a summer romance, we know what it's like to be young in the summer. As we live it, it feels like it'll last forever but the end always comes far too soon, a perfect metaphor for Elio and Oliver's relationship. I've heard criticisms that this film is a gay film for straight audiences and while that criticism isn't completely unfounded, I am straight and so for me, it does work. I have never fallen in love with a man (although God knows if I was on holiday with a man who looked like Armie Hammer I might) but through a languishing summer gaze, I start to feel what it might feel like to do so. It's hard to explain the grasp this film has over me but the gist of it can be summarised by the line from the Sufjan Stevens song: "Blessed be the mystery of love", not least Elio and Oliver's love.
2. Before Trilogy
I am aware that this maybe counts as cheating because it's three films but if you want to be picky about it, I would probably choose Before Sunrise. This is my blog though, I control the rules and these three films exist together as one utterly perfect love story. In Sunrise, Jessie and Celine meet on a train to Vienna, ships in the night of our world. They decide to leave together and spend a night walking around the city and talking about life, death and everything in between. Each subsequent film picks up their story nine years later and part of the genius of this trilogy is that they are actually filmed nine years later as well, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprising their roles each time under the direction of Richard Linklater. It's often said of this trilogy that Sunrise is a story of "what might be", Sunset is a story of "what should have been" and Midnight is a film about "what is" and in capturing love in its dawn, dusk and twilight years, Linklater captures maybe cinema's most honest romance. There may be much in these films that I'm yet to experience but that doesn't matter. What matters is that it feels honest, feels almost as honest as it feels stupendously beautiful. It is a love story for the ages, told through the ages.
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I was feeling particularly rough around Valentine's Day this year and so I ended up watching a bunch of romance films, a couple of which I've already discussed. The marathon crescendoed here, with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film that is itself set on Valentine's Day. For years, it has been one of my favourite films and so re-visiting it scared me in case it wouldn't be as good. It was even better than I had remembered. Why Eternal Sunshine is better than any of the other films on the list is that it flips the framing of most of these other films. When the film opens, the two leads have fallen out of love and are seeking to remove each other from their memories but by joining Joel (a never better Jim Carrey) as he goes through this mind wipe procedure, we see the two fall in love. Non-chronological story telling isn't unheard of with romance films but in structuring the story so that we see the characters first hating each other and then more and more in love as the film goes on, the audience are allowed to empathise even more with the characters. We aren't in love with either of the characters as the film starts but by the end, we ache for them, with them, because of them. You can try and forget the people in your life who have hurt you but in doing so, you forget the good times you had and all the ways in which they made you a better person. Of all the films I have ever seen, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind taught me the most about myself and how I approach loving other people. The chances are, it may teach you as much too. It is visually, structurally and thematically beautiful and honestly, it could actually be my favourite film of all time. I utterly adore this film and I hope you will someday too.
7. If Beale Street Could Talk
First on our list is the most recent film of the bunch, from director of Moonlight Barry Jenkins, a man who already proved he knows a thing about romance. Where Moonlight was more of a journey of self-discovery in which romance played a key role, If Beale Street Could Talk is pure romance, through and through. It's the story of Fonnie and Tish, a young couple living in New York who, after growing up together, slowly begin to realise that the love they feel for each other runs deeper than just friendship. It flashes back and forward from when they're falling in love to when Fonnie is imprisoned and Tish must try and fight for his innocence. The combination of these two things offers an incredible melancholy, as the soaring heights of love are contrasted with the lows that come from being forcibly separated. Primarily though, the reasons the film work as well as they do are the cinematography from James Laxton that puts us in the centre of their world and Nicholas Britell's score, that breaks my heart every time I listen to it. Everything in the film is brilliant but these two things elevate it and puts it on this list.
6. Carol
It's always those romances that are most impossible that have the most hold on me, a trend we're going to see throughout this list because I am apparently an especially sad human being. Anyway, Carol is one of those stories, in which the impossibilities come from many things; the age gap, Carol's marriage, the tabboo nature of lesbianism in the fifties. Because of this, there is a pit in the bottom of our stomachs because we know this relationship can't last, won't last. And yet, you can't help but fall in love too. Todd Haynes has made some weird films in his time (Safe especially is very odd) but he is entirely earnest with his approach to this love story. I feel myself skating around any of the actual substance here but that's only because it has a mysticism that is hard to grasp. To describe it would be to de-romanticise it and I couldn't do that to such an enrapturing film. Just go seek out Carol, you probably haven't seen it but you should.
5. Brief Encounter
With Brief Encounter, we have the prototype for many of the films on this list and I'm ashamed to say it has taken me until this year to see it. Since then though, it has stuck with me potently. It's the story of a brief encounter (get it?) between two people who bump into each other at a train station and start to fall in love. It can't last of course but that is what makes their love so strong. David Lean is most famous for epics like Doctor Zhivago or Laurence of Arabia but instead of going large, Lean leans into the smaller moments. The way characters look at each other when they're in the company of those who know them, the attempts to bargain with fate, how words can say more than the words actually mean; it is all captured incredibly. Plus, it has an energy that many don't usually associate with old films, putting many modern efforts to shame. Of all the films on the list, this is probably the film you're least likely to have seen just because of its age but I can't stress how much its elegance will convert you. In a time when the second world war was tearing the world apart, audiences were given a beautiful love story to escape into and today, it holds up just as well.
4. Her
From here on, these are all 10/10 films, films that enrapture me and even start to define who I am and how I interact with the world. With Her, when I first saw it about five years ago, it impressed me with an honest look at love in a world that felt as if it was only months away. Since then, I have sat with it, experienced a romantic relationship myself and watched the world move closer and closer to the world Theodore inhabits. And then I rewatched it a few months ago. And it swept me away more than it had before. See, in 2014, the idea of someone falling in love with their operating system because of how lonely they are seemed possible but unlikely. Now? It seems more than possible. In the spirit of honesty, I often think about what I would do if the possibility were given to me. Maybe I would fall in love with an AI, because it can't be more difficult than falling in love with a human. Whether I would or not, what Her does is presents, without judgement, a glimpse of a society that, in bringing people closer together, has only torn us further apart. It doesn't sound implausible today but Her only succeeds because that love story at its core feels so true. It is what makes that glimpse at our near future so realistic.
3. Call Me By Your Name
Here we are, the film I loved so much that my housemates are still convinced I'm gay, Call Me By Your Name is another LGBT love story that is also a film about fleeting romance. Elio, a teenager living in Italy, meets student Oliver, coming to study with his father for the summer. This film's romance feels especially strong because of how closely it is linked to that feeling of summer. Even if we haven't all experienced a summer romance, we know what it's like to be young in the summer. As we live it, it feels like it'll last forever but the end always comes far too soon, a perfect metaphor for Elio and Oliver's relationship. I've heard criticisms that this film is a gay film for straight audiences and while that criticism isn't completely unfounded, I am straight and so for me, it does work. I have never fallen in love with a man (although God knows if I was on holiday with a man who looked like Armie Hammer I might) but through a languishing summer gaze, I start to feel what it might feel like to do so. It's hard to explain the grasp this film has over me but the gist of it can be summarised by the line from the Sufjan Stevens song: "Blessed be the mystery of love", not least Elio and Oliver's love.
2. Before Trilogy
I am aware that this maybe counts as cheating because it's three films but if you want to be picky about it, I would probably choose Before Sunrise. This is my blog though, I control the rules and these three films exist together as one utterly perfect love story. In Sunrise, Jessie and Celine meet on a train to Vienna, ships in the night of our world. They decide to leave together and spend a night walking around the city and talking about life, death and everything in between. Each subsequent film picks up their story nine years later and part of the genius of this trilogy is that they are actually filmed nine years later as well, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprising their roles each time under the direction of Richard Linklater. It's often said of this trilogy that Sunrise is a story of "what might be", Sunset is a story of "what should have been" and Midnight is a film about "what is" and in capturing love in its dawn, dusk and twilight years, Linklater captures maybe cinema's most honest romance. There may be much in these films that I'm yet to experience but that doesn't matter. What matters is that it feels honest, feels almost as honest as it feels stupendously beautiful. It is a love story for the ages, told through the ages.
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I was feeling particularly rough around Valentine's Day this year and so I ended up watching a bunch of romance films, a couple of which I've already discussed. The marathon crescendoed here, with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film that is itself set on Valentine's Day. For years, it has been one of my favourite films and so re-visiting it scared me in case it wouldn't be as good. It was even better than I had remembered. Why Eternal Sunshine is better than any of the other films on the list is that it flips the framing of most of these other films. When the film opens, the two leads have fallen out of love and are seeking to remove each other from their memories but by joining Joel (a never better Jim Carrey) as he goes through this mind wipe procedure, we see the two fall in love. Non-chronological story telling isn't unheard of with romance films but in structuring the story so that we see the characters first hating each other and then more and more in love as the film goes on, the audience are allowed to empathise even more with the characters. We aren't in love with either of the characters as the film starts but by the end, we ache for them, with them, because of them. You can try and forget the people in your life who have hurt you but in doing so, you forget the good times you had and all the ways in which they made you a better person. Of all the films I have ever seen, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind taught me the most about myself and how I approach loving other people. The chances are, it may teach you as much too. It is visually, structurally and thematically beautiful and honestly, it could actually be my favourite film of all time. I utterly adore this film and I hope you will someday too.
Comments
Post a Comment