The Best Tragic Romance Movies for a Valentine’s Day Cuddle
Happy couples love to watch romance movies on Valentine’s Day, and with good reason. They get to see their story played out on screen and flirt with the idea that theirs is an epic romance, worthy of cinematic spectacle.
The same principle applies to those not in a relationship on Valentine’s Day. For every great film romance, there’s a sad movie about love lost, love faded, or love never found. For those who don’t want to feel good on February 14th, (or who want to have a reason to cuddle with someone extra tight) these tragic romance movies have just the right amount of hurt.
1. The Apartment (1960)
1960's The Apartment begins with the most cynical look at love. Company man C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) makes his way up the corporate ladder by lending upper management his apartment so that his bosses can take their mistresses there instead of some hotel. Director Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the movie with I. A. L. Diamond, knows how to make the most of a cynical premise, turning his dyspeptic eye toward the mercenary nature of business.
However, it also gives Baxter a love interest in the form of Mrs. Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), who sinks into a deep depression after poor treatment from their boss, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). The Apartment has a happy ending, including a great Wilder last line, but it takes a lot of hurt and sadness to get there.
2. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
In Brokeback Mountain, it’s not desire or attraction that prevents the central couple, cowhands Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). Rather, it is the society around them that rejects their relationship, sometimes under threat of death.
Directed by Ang Lee and written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, adapting the short story by Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain captures the longing between the two men. The oft-quoted line “I wish I knew how to quit you” rings true with anyone who has been in a relationship that never could be, no matter what the time or place.
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
“Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like cr-p.” So declares Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) at the start of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the mind-bending romance film by director Michel Gondry and writer Spike Jonze.
Joel feels so awful because he recently erased from his mind the memory of his one-time love, Clementine (Kate Winslet), who also had him wiped away. Presented in Gondry surreal visual style, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind operates like a standard romance movie, in which the couple fights to overcome the obstacles keeping them apart. But given that the obstacles exist inside their minds and memories, the movie builds to an ambiguous ending that leaves Joel and Clementine’s future in question.
4. In the Mood for Love (2000)
Hong Kong neighbors Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) didn’t set out to have a relationship. In fact, the two protagonists of In the Mood for Love just exchanged innocuous greetings at first, until they discovered their spouses’ affair with each other.
From that betrayal, Chow and Chan build a romance full of longing and desire, but with very little consummation. Writer and director Wong Kar-wai knows how to use slow pans and a soundtrack full of pop songs to communicate feelings that the principal characters cannot acknowledge, not even to themselves.
5. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Written and directed by Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire stars Noémie Merlant as Marianne, a painter hired to paint the portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), the reluctant betrothed of a nobleman.
Héloïse does her best to refuse the portrait as much as she does the marriage into which she’s forced, driving Marianne to observe and paint her in secret. But when Héloïse realizes that she’s found in Marianne someone who sees her for the fiery and resilient person she is, the two begin a romance rejected by their society.
6. Romeo and Juliet (1968)
In many ways, Romeo and Juliet informs all of the movies on this list. Shakespeare’s love story of two scions of warring families in Verona set the model for tragic romances.
However, because of its titanic presence in Western culture, some forget the young age of the two lovers, which adds a level of foolishness to the tragedy. Director Franco Zeffirelli, who co-wrote the screenplay with Franco Brusati and Masolino D’Amico, avoids this problem by casting teenagers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey in the lead roles.
Recent revelations from Whiting and Hussey about Zeffirelli’s mistreatment of them during the filming taints the film, but no one can deny the sadness added to the story by the adolescent cast.
7. Casablanca (1942)
Even those who have never seen a Humphrey Bogart movie can quote his famous line at the end of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. “Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” Bogart’s cynical Rick tells his would-be love Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), urging her to forget about him and get on a plane.
The sorry of the line, which Bogart allows to peak through under Rick’s attempts at swagger, tells a truth most romance movies refuse to accept: while the stakes might feel monumental to the lovers, the rest of the world doesn’t care whether two people get together or stay together.
8. Titanic (1997)
Even knowing the skills that director James Cameron brought to his story of the infamous shipwreck, it’s still hard to believe that Titanic works as well as it does. Anyone going into the film knows that the ship will sink, and the liaison between society woman Rose (Winslet), engaged to a cruel man she does not love, and stowaway Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) recalls countless tales before.
However, Cameron leans into the mythic power of both the ship and the doomed love, making them feel fresh and fundamental. As a result, the sight of Jack sinking into the water retains a special power, no matter how often viewers watch and rewatch Titanic.
9. West Side Story (1961)
Like the 1957 musical that inspired it, West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and written by Ernest Lehman, transports Romeo and Juliet from fair Verona to the streets of New York. That’s where Puerto Rican Maria (Natalie Wood), sister of the Sharks leader Bernardo, meets and falls for Tony (Richard Beymer), a former member of the Caucasian gang the Jets. Tony and Maria have no more success than their earlier counterparts, but they add some fantastic musical numbers to the process, making their affair all the more moving.
10. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) love one another. They will have a child and enjoy the blessing of Tish’s parents and Fonny’s father. Fonny works hard to provide for the new family, and they even find a fine place to live. But because Tish and Fonny are young Black people in America, they have to contend with systemic racism.
In particular, the couple gets separated when Fonny goes to prison after a woman accuses him of assault. As in the James Baldwin novel that inspired it, writer and director Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk shows that even love struggles to overcome racism.
11. Brief Encounter (1941)
For some, Brief Encounter doesn’t feature a tragic romance as much as a couple stopped from hurting other people. The movie comes from director David Lean, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Noël Coward, the latter who wrote the 1936 play Still Life, on which Brief Encounter is based.
Celia Johnson stars as Laura Jesson a bored married woman who meets kind doctor Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard). Despite their good intentions, the two soon fall for each other and struggle with their sense of desire and commitment. Against those who want to read Brief Encounter in simple moral terms, Lean and his collaborators focus on the situation's complexity, giving equal weight to every part of the couple’s emotions.
12. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
French writer and director Jacques Demy made his name with light-hearted comedies, driven by impeccable visual humor. Given its music and bright colors, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg seems like a continuation of Demy’s other work.
However, against the light-hearted setting is the heart-wrenching tale of Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve), two people very much in love but separated by parents and war. Demy doesn’t allow the couple an easy resolution, but the beautiful songs and wonderful set dressing make the story somehow worth it.
13. Marriage Story (2019)
Marriage Story begins with married couple Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) reading aloud from letters they wrote about one another, sharing what they love in their spouse. Rather than use these letters to hold the duo together as their relationship hits the rocks, writer, and director Noah Baumbach begins the movie with the letters to set the stage for tragic irony.
The mundane, but no less harrowing, breakup that follows feels more disparaging because of the letters, which show that even though the two find much to love in one another, they still cannot stay together.
14. Amour (2012)
Most of the movies on this list involve young people of one sort or another, whose naive loves get dashed on the hard rocks of reality. That’s not the case in Amour, written and directed by German provocateur Michael Haneke.
Octogenarian couple Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) love one another and enjoy a comfortable life. But that love cannot prevent the ravages of old age, which tear the two apart from one another and themselves. Hanake’s frank approach refuses to soften the proceedings with sentiment, which makes Amour hurt more than most films on this list.
15. All Us Strangers (2023)
Throughout All Us Strangers, lonely Londoner Adam (Andrew Scott) reserves his greatest feelings for his parents (Jamie Bell and Clare Foy), whom he visits in fantasy sequences. Because his parents died in a car accident when he was a boy, these spectral visits give Adam his sole access to them.
However, that distance allows him to bond with neighbor Henry (Paul Mescal), with whom Adam has a chance at a stable life. Like the Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada that he adapts, writer and director Andrew Haigh cannot give Adam the happy ending he deserves, but the movie’s vision of the afterlife offers something like comfort and hope.
16. Atonement (2007)
The Ian McEwan novelAtonement operates with an unreliable narrator, whose recollection of the fling between Cecilia Tallis (Kiera Knightly) and her housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) drives Atonement.
In the movie version from director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, Saoirse Ronan plays the unreliable narrator Briony, the would-be novelist and younger sister of Cecilia. As a visual medium, the film Atonement cannot reproduce the slippery prose that drove the book. However, its final moments pack a punch all the same, undercutting what viewers thought was a powerful romance.
17. An Affair to Remember (1957)
Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) have a plan. Despite already having partners, the two feel a real spark when they meet on a cruise ship. If, after six months, that feeling remains, they agree to leave their partners and meet again atop the Empire State Building.
After half a year has passed, both Nickie and Terry still long for one another. However, as Terry heads to the Empire State Building, she gets in an accident that leaves her paralyzed and Nickie, filled with dejection, moves on with his life.
That set-up gives An Affair to Remember a sense of melancholy that carries over the entire film. Director Leo McCarey and his co-screenwriters Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart craft a satisfying melodrama, one that earns its hopeful ending.
18. Past Lives (2023)
Some may take exception to the inclusion of Past Lives on this list. The debut film from writer and director Celine Song can be interpreted as less a romance and more of a glimpse at a friendship that never happened, thanks to an ambiguous ending.
Greta Lee stars as Nora, a New Yorker who immigrated from Korea with her family when she was 12, leaving behind her best friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). Years later, the two reunite, forcing them to consider the life together they lost. Whether one considers this lost life a romance or a friendship, regret marks the missing connection of Past Lives.
19. Bright Star (2009)
In his famed poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” 19th-century poet John Keats describes the perfect tension of a love never consummated. For her biography of Keats Bright Star, writer and director Jane Campion recreates that sweet refusal of fulfillment with the performances of Ben Wishaw as the ill-fated poet and Abbie Cornish as his beloved Miss Brawne.
Campion matches the heightened emotions of her subject, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, crafting a story whose historical reality increases the sorrow it invokes.
20. The Remains of the Day (1993)
To hear him tell it, butler Mr. Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) has lived a good service life. However, director James Ivory’s adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel The Remains of the Day, written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala finds Stevens recognizing an emptiness rat the end of his days.
Most notably, Stevens regrets that he let housekeeper Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) walk out of his life. As in the Ishiguro novel, The Remains of the Day never shows Stevens admitting to himself the sadness of his situation. But that very refusal to accept his feelings makes the film such a classic of the tragic romance genre.
21. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
The unraveling bond between Polish immigrant Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep) and her American boyfriend Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline) isn’t the real tragedy in Sophie’s Choice, written and directed by Alan J. Pakula, based on the novel by William Styron.
Instead, it’s the titular decision that Sophie had to make in fascist-occupied Poland, a horrible situation that she can never forget. As Sophie and Nathan grow closer, the former must face the consequences of her past, a situation that no relationship can withstand.
22. Cyrano (2021)
As memorialized in the 19th-century drama by Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac is literature’s great unrequited lover. His story has been told and re-told on film many times but the most sentimental version might be the Joe Wright musical Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage as the titular character.
Written by Erica Schmidt, Cyrano hits all the classic plot beats of the celebrated story, in which Cyrano helps his inarticulate friend Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) woo the beautiful Roxanne (Haley Bennett). However, Dinklage's expressive face, which conveys hurt and resignation with just a lift of the eyebrows, makes Wright’s take the most unforgettable.
23. The Way We Were (1973)
Everyone has heard that opposites attract, but opposites can also repel, especially in a long-term relationship. That’s the message of The Way We Were, directed by Sydney Pollack and written by Arthur Laurents, adapting his own novel.
Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford star as a couple with different backgrounds and values, he a privileged playwright, and she a working-class activist. Those differences create a spark that draws them together, but it also becomes a wedge to drive them apart in this clear-eyed, but nonetheless sweet, drama.
24. The Room (2003)
Most people know of The Room as the infamous so-bad-it's-good movie, which brought phrases such as “Oh, hai Mark” into the lexicon. However, beyond the insane dialogue and inconsistent visuals, The Room is, at its heart, a tragic romance movie.
All-around good guy Johnny (writer/director/producer Tommy Wiseau) wants to dote on his beloved Lisa (Juliette Danielle). But when he learns of her unfaithfulness, Johnny loses the ability to trust in anyone. Wisseau’s extreme self-indulgence and non-existent self-awareness dull the tragedy of The Room, but one can see how he wanted audiences to feel for his perfect and guileless stand-in, wronged by the women around him.
