Directed by Douglas Sirk • 1955 • United States
Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead

This heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores by Douglas Sirk follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow (Jane Wyman) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Rock...

Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1991 • United States
Starring River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, William Richert

River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves star in this haunting tale from Gus Van Sant about two young street hustlers: Mike Waters, a sensitive narcoleptic who dreams of the mother who abandoned him, and ...

Directed by Martin Scorsese • 1993 • United States
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

No filmmaker captures the grandeur and energy of New York like Martin Scorsese. With this sumptuous romance, he meticulously adapted the work of another great New York artist, Edith Whar...

Directed by Nora Ephron • 1993 •.United States
Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Bill Pullman

The charisma of stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and pitch-perfect writing and direction by Nora Ephron come together for one of the all-time great screen romances. Sam Baldwin (Hanks) is a widowed father who, ...

Directed by Jane Campion • 2009 • United Kingdom, France
Starring Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider

Jane Campion’s rapturous period romance is an exquisite vision of transcendent love set in the literary world of the nineteenth century. A secret affair begins between twenty-three-year-o...

Directed by Francis Lee • 2017 • United Kingdom
Starring Josh O’Connor, Alec Secǎreanu, Gemma Jones

A by turns raw, tender, and sexy tale of queer longing plays out against the bleak beauty of the Yorkshire countryside in this earthy, strikingly naturalistic feature debut from director Francis L...

Directed by Lili Horvát • 2020 • Hungary
Starring Natasa Stork, Viktor Bodó, Benett Vilmányi

The second feature by Hungarian director Lili Horvát is a slippery, seductive investigation of memory, obsession, and delusion. After twenty years in the United States, Hungarian neurosurgeon Márta (Nata...

Directed by Terence Davies • 2011 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale

Master chronicler of postwar England Terence Davies directs this ravishing adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about a woman whose overpowering love threatens her w...

Directed by Albert Lewin • 1951 • United States
Starring James Mason, Ava Gardner

This timeless romance based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman features sumptuous color cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Ava Gardner, one of the most beautiful screen goddesses of all time, plays Pandora, a wom...

Directed by James Ivory • 1987 • United Kingdom
Starring James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves

James Ivory’s sumptuously romantic adaptation of E. M. Forster’s posthumously published novel “Maurice” is a heart-racing story of coming to terms with one’s sexuality and identity in the face of disa...

Directed by Julian Jarrold • 2008 • United Kingdom
Starring Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell

Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel of class, Catholicism, forbidden desire, and youthful abandon giving way to adult disillusionment comes to the screen in a seductively opulent adaptation. In 1920s E...

Directed by David Lean • 1949 • United Kingdom
Starring Ann Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains

Four years after David Lean crafted what may be the screen’s most piercing examination of extramarital romance with BRIEF ENCOUNTER, he returned to a similar subject in this exquisite tale of a woman to...

Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 2000 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery abo...

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake

In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional regi...