What movies we see when we talk about love?

8 February, 2023

We’re fast approaching Valentine’s Day aka the celebration of love, so what better way to mark the event than with some fitting movie recommendations? We asked among ourselves, at Films in Frame, what are some movies we associate with love (in a broader sense of the word), that taught us something new about relationships or spoke to us about affection and romance in a different way than the usual sappy, cliched story? Thus, we’ve come to a list of 10 titles that depict love stories in all manners. We don’t cover the whole love sphere, but we guarantee that these films are like balm for the soul.

 

Time to Love / Sevmek Zamanı (dir. Metin Erksan, 1965)

 

A hidden pearl of Turkish cinema, from its heyday (the “Yeşilçam” era), recently restored at the initiative of MUBI (the first restoration project commissioned by the famous platform) – Time to Love by Metin Erksan, the first Turkish filmmaker to win the Golden Bear (with Dry Summer, 1964), is a revelation.

Very much modern – a film of silences, dead times and long takes, which reminds of Antonioni, Rohmer and Jancso alike –, Time to Love follows Halil, a painter who earns his living by painting villas owned by the haute bourgeoisie on the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara. While at work in one of the houses, he falls hopelessly in love with the portrait of a young woman, Meral, and begins to spend several hours every day in the company of the photograph. When Meral shows up in the flesh at the villa for an unexpected visit, she becomes intrigued by his deep love – especially since Halil claims he loves the photograph, not her real self. A surprising and still very fresh perspective on love and loneliness in the age of mechanical reproduction. (Flavia Dima)

 

Shoplifters (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)

 

Love starts in the family. In Shoplifters, love unites the members of a poor family who don’t have much but have each other. Together they survive and together decide to save a little girl, Yuri, when they discover that she is being abused by her parents. Gradually, it is revealed that their entire family is, in fact, made up of random people, unrelated to each other, that simply came together.

The bond between them is not based on blood but on nurture, support, protection and closeness. Taking care of Yuri is the most natural thing for this unusual family. Shoplifters is not a happy ending film, but one full of love, which also explores important themes such as abuse, poverty and the power of community. (Melissa Antonescu)

 

The Fabelmans (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2022)

 

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film, which notched 7 nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, is a story about love in countless forms – the protagonist’s love for his parents, especially for his mother (played beautifully by Michelle Williams) who always understood and encouraged his artistic sense; his father’s love for his profession, to which he is devoted until the very end; his mother’s secret love for a close family friend; and above all, the protagonist’s, thus Spielberg’s, love for the world of film, which he discovers at an early age and is, in fact, the focus of the story.

Spielberg takes us through his childhood and college years — the heartbreak and anxieties caused by his parents’ divorce, the confusion due to his cultural and social identity — in this ode to cinema, which ultimately saved him, making it perhaps his best film yet and certainly his most honest. A story told with a lot of flair and full of love, which I’m betting on to win the Oscars for Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. (Laura Mușat)

 

Jealousy / La jalousie (dir. Philippe Garrel, 2012)

 

In his 2012 film, Jealousy, Philippe Garrel gathers all his obsessions in one place. A beautiful summation film, which profitably sums up a career, is indeed a rare thing. Running for less than 75 minutes, Jealousy is – with its clear, serene brevity – more than that: an event. From the fulfilment of filiation to the love for the child, and from the thrill of meeting a woman to the agony of parting, this little treatise on angelology disguised in earthly forms is recognized, first of all, as the gesture of a master. Between the sculptural black-and-white image and the nostalgic chords of Jean-Louis Aubert, Garrel orchestrates his own children with the sado-cinephile voluptuousness of the sage still willing to risk a journey into the depths of the psyche – the heart of darkness and light of this brilliant poet of love. Jealousy is, like any Garrel, a life lived on the edge, moment by moment. (Victor Morozov)

 

The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)

 

If we were to establish a common denominator, Yorgos Lanthimos’s films are both shocking and disturbing due to a great deal of absurdity and cruelty. So is the case of The Lobster – a film about love, but, viewed from above, an inverted version of the myth of the androgyne, which speaks about our need for systems and rules, as well as our desire to break them.

We’re dealing with a dystopia that takes place in a future where being in a couple is the only legal form of existence. Those who don’t have a significant other or have just lost their partner are sent to a hotel-institution, forced to find their match – where “match” is reduced to a mahjong game of human traits, as they appear in an anti-world. They have 45 days, and those who fail are turned into animals and thrown into the wild. The bizarre and discomfort dominate the universe, and Lanthimos pushes things to the limit, to the edge, in the most cynical way possible, creating an atmosphere as present as a character, enhanced by incredibly sarcastic and harsh dialogues. A story about the oddity of being human, but especially about the dangers of a modus operandi of private life. (Sabrina Canea)

 

The Last Movie Stars (dir. Ethan Hawke, 2022)

 

We’ve gotten used to Hollywood, since its inception, almost exclusively feeding us true stories of divorce, addiction, abuse, and untimely death (and the studios have created a mythology out of it – see, most recently, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon). But The Last Movie Stars, a documentary series made during the pandemic and available on HBO Max, reminds us that Hollywood has also seen a long-lasting romance, spanning decades, between two stars: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Of course, it wasn’t all rosy – the documentary doesn’t circumvent Newman’s failings, such as his affair with a nanny or his alcoholism, nor how motherhood took Woodward out of Hollywood’s attention at one point. But over the course of the six episodes, which follow their careers and their entire relationship, from their first spark to Newman’s death and Woodward’s descent into the darkness of Alzheimer’s, the film captures the sincere – and touching – affection the two had for one another. (Ionuț Mareș)

 

The Whale (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2022)

 

I saw The Whale in not-so-great conditions, constantly bothered by a whispering couple. Brendan Fraser was pouring his heart out on the screen, playing a dying obese man with heaps of regrets, and these guys looked like they had come to the cinema to kill a few hours while waiting for the next bus. I felt avenged at the end when in the general commotion that took over the room, sobs and noses blowing, there they were too, all teary and touched.

The Whale hits you from all directions with all kinds of imperfect loves revolving around Charlie, a literature teacher self-exiled in his own home, determined (or at least indifferent) to eat himself to death. It’s a tear-jerker that reaches meta heights: part of the emotion that the story conveys comes from the overlap of the main character with the main actor (see the standing ovation Fraser got in Venice, both for his performance and his comeback after years of trouble). Aronofsky is an expert in casting and bringing back once-famous, ultimately devoured by Hollywood actors; he already did it with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. The Whale makes this list due to the director’s love for his actors (film history is full of such examples) and his characters – it would have been so easy for Aronofsky to deny them the salvation they yearn for (it would have been the more artsy, European option) and demoralize the audience. So the sobbing wasn’t for nothing. (Andrei Șendrea)

 

Miracle Mile (dir. Steve De Jarnatt, 1988)

 

I came across Miracle Mile by accident while looking for a movie I forgot to note down when I read Tarantino’s book Cinema Speculation. The poster with palm trees on fire caught my attention and I pressed play without checking what it was about (on Letterboxd, smart enough, it’s cropped in such a way that the mushroom cloud in one corner doesn’t even appear). This was happening at the beginning of last month; since then, I find myself thinking about it constantly. It could be described as a romantic comedy interrupted, à la Parasite, by an apocalyptic thriller. Or a Before Sunrise gone wrong. Harry and Julie, a jazz singer and a waitress, meet in an L.A. museum and spend a dreamy afternoon together. They promise to meet after Julie’s shift for a night of dancing, but a power outage causes Harry to be two hours late. Still, he manages to pick up a desperate call on the public phone: a soldier is looking for his father to inform him that a nuclear war has begun. It’s too much of a risk to be dismissed as a prank call, so he sets off on a mad dash to find his lover before society collapses and a safe place before the world ends.

Steve De Jarnatt’s second (and final) film is as potent as it was 35 years ago when it appeared at the height of the Cold War. But in retrospect, what adds to this roller coaster of emotions, to this anxiety that I didn’t feel so acutely even in Uncut Gems, is the core of an intoxicating romantic idealism. It is not just a film about a young love, unsullied by the passing of years, that struggles to grasp one more day, but also about that wounded love that, faced with the possibility of an end, accepts the outcome and overcomes even the deepest wounds. Inevitably, one scene in the film reminded me of the elderly couple in Titanic who embrace each other awaiting the end. Unlike Cameron’s film, Miracle Mile didn’t find its audience when it premiered, but as a hopeless romantic, I like to think it’s never too late. (Laurențiu Paraschiv)

 

Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)

 

I don’t know exactly when I decided in my mind that Possession would be the film to perhaps best sum up the idea of love (the devouring one that deals with flesh, body parts and blood). As it happens, it depicts love as an act of mutual destruction. It’s an anti-romantic film, on the edge of the abyss, haunting and allegorical – one could see it’s all intended to be metaphorical. It may not be a heartwarming choice, but I’m sure I won’t be the only masochist to (re)watch this film on Valentine’s Day. (Georgiana Mușat)

Punch-Drunk Love (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

 

I was completely taken by Barry, an anxious entrepreneur, wonderfully played by Adam Sandler, in his oversized blue suit, with his impressive collection of pudding boxes (12,150 to be exact, collected to win a promotion that offers frequent-flyer miles), his fits of rage (when he is bullied by his seven sisters) or his anger management techniques (he destroys a restaurant toilet during a romantic dinner). Everything seems to change for Barry when he meets and falls in love with Lena (Emily Watson), but things get complicated when he falls prey to a phone sex line scam that seems to threaten his relationship.

One critic said it best: Punch-Drunk Love is “a romantic comedy on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” There is no better way to describe the unpredictable and chaos lurking around every corner in this visually beautiful film, with a pace fueled by a baroque-futuristic score (composed by Jon Brion) and an Adam Sandler in a different role from the mainstream comedies he used to be known for at the time.

The film won the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2002. I recommend it to anyone dealing with social anxiety and for that magical moment on the beach in Hawaii when Barry, nervous and shy, tries to find the right words to say to the woman he loves but all he can articulate is: “It really looks like Hawaii here.” (Anca Vancu)

 



An article written by the magazine's team