To find honest answers, cinema has ventured into more rugged and sincere territories. It does not return a perfect, polished image of love, but fragments of truth: sometimes distorted, often painful, but always deeply authentic. Unconventional love stories do not try to sell us a fairy tale, but to explore the complex labyrinth of human connection.
Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Johan and Marianne have been married for ten years and seem like the perfect couple: affluent, educated, with two daughters. Interviewed for a magazine, they embody the ideal of bourgeois stability. However, behind this facade lie deep cracks, dissatisfactions, and unspoken truths that will soon explode, bringing their marriage to the brink of disintegration and beyond.
Ingmar Bergman performs an act of emotional vivisection, turning the camera into a scalpel that cuts through the surface of normality to expose the raw nerves of a relationship. More than a film, it is a session of cinematic psychoanalysis. Bergman uses claustrophobic close-ups and torrential dialogues to trap the viewer in the couple’s psychological space, making the collapse of their communication a visceral and shared experience. The work is a foundational text that has influenced every subsequent story about marital dissolution, an “X-ray examination” that reveals how love, even the most solid, can be eroded by what is left unsaid.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
On a rainy evening in Munich, Emmi, an elderly German widow who works as a cleaning lady, enters a bar frequented by immigrants and meets Ali, a much younger Moroccan mechanic. An unlikely and tender love story blossoms between them, upending their lives and unleashing the racist and bigoted hostility of her family, neighbors, and colleagues.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder uses the tropes of Hollywood melodrama, particularly paying homage to Douglas Sirk, to launch a fierce critique of the hypocrisy of post-war German society. The relationship between Emmi and Ali becomes a magnifying glass on racial tensions, ageism, and classism. Fassbinder’s visual style, with characters often framed by doors and windows, emphasizes their isolation and the social prison in which they are confined. The film’s most devastating insight is showing how, once the external pressure subsides, the couple internalizes those same power dynamics, laying bare the fragility of a bond born on the margins.
Blue Valentine (2010)
The film follows two parallel timelines: the past, showing the romantic meeting and passionate falling in love of Dean, a dreamy mover, and Cindy, a medical student; and the present, depicting their now-worn-out marriage, marked by disillusionment, frustration, and a heartbreaking lack of communication. The two attempt one last, desperate getaway to rediscover the lost magic.
Derek Cianfrance doesn’t just tell a story; he embodies the disintegration of love in the very form of the film. The choice to shoot the past on warm, nostalgic 16mm film and the present with a cold, detached digital camera is not a stylistic flourish but the beating heart of the narrative. This visual dualism forces the viewer into a constant, painful comparison between the initial idyll and the final ruin, posing the agonizing question: “How did we get from that to this?” The performances by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, with an almost documentary-like rawness, make the decay of feeling a tangible and universal mystery.
A Separation (2011)
Nader and Simin disagree about their family’s future: she wants to leave Iran to offer a better life for their daughter Termeh, while he refuses to abandon his father, who has Alzheimer’s. Their separation triggers a chain of events involving a religious caregiver and her hot-tempered husband, turning a domestic drama into a complex legal and moral case.
Asghar Farhadi masterfully expands the concept of a couple’s crisis, showing how a private conflict is never truly private. The separation between Nader and Simin becomes the narrative engine that uncovers the deep social, religious, and class fault lines of contemporary Iran. Every decision, every lie, and every half-truth of the protagonists has repercussions that spread in concentric circles, trapping everyone in a web of shared responsibility. The film is an ethical thriller that demonstrates how the personal is inexorably political and how a single crack in a marriage can reveal the fractures of an entire society.
Weekend (2011)
After a night out with friends, Russell, a shy and reserved lifeguard, meets Glen in a gay club. What starts as a one-night stand transforms into something deeper over the course of a single weekend. The two men talk, have sex, do drugs, and confront each other, exploring their identities, their fears, and the possibility of a connection destined to be cut short by Glen’s impending departure.
Andrew Haigh captures with rare sensitivity the ephemeral magic of an encounter that becomes a catalyst for self-discovery. The film explicitly explores the concept of identity: a new partner is a “blank canvas” on which to project who you want to be. The weekend thus becomes a compressed and intense space where the two protagonists not only get to know each other but also negotiate and debate what it means to be a gay man today, embodying opposing impulses between assimilation and separatism. Their connection is as much an investigation of love as it is of defining one’s own identity, both public and private.
A vision curated by a filmmaker, not an algorithm
In this video I explain our vision
Like Crazy (2011)
Anna, a British student, and Jacob, an American student, fall madly in love in Los Angeles. Their idyllic story is abruptly interrupted when Anna, not wanting to be separated from Jacob, overstays her student visa and is consequently denied re-entry into the United States. Thus begins a heartbreaking long-distance relationship, filled with waiting, jealousy, and attempts to move on with other people.
This film, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, is a painfully realistic portrait of the challenges of long-distance love. Its strength lies largely in its improvised dialogue, which gives the interactions an almost documentary-like truth. Like Crazy serves as a bitter counterpoint to the model of the fleeting encounter: what happens when the magic of an intense connection is forced to clash with the logistical nightmare of reality? The film explores with disarming sincerity whether the strength of an initial connection is enough to survive years of separation, time zones, and lives that inevitably diverge.
The Lobster (2015)
In a dystopian society, single people are arrested and transferred to a hotel where they have 45 days to find a partner. If they fail, they are turned into an animal of their choice and released into the woods. David, a man recently left by his wife, chooses to become a lobster in case of failure, but desperately tries to find a mate to save himself.
Yorgos Lanthimos delivers a brilliant and surreal allegory of modern dating culture and the social pressure to be in a couple. The dialogue, deliberately flat and monotonous, reflects the dehumanization imposed by these social expectations, where genuine connection is replaced by a desperate search for superficial similarities. The film is a ruthless satire that criticizes not only the obligation to be in a couple but also its opposite, the faction of “Loners” who impose singledom with the same tyranny, showing how any system that represses individual freedom is equally monstrous.
45 Years (2015)
A week before their 45th wedding anniversary party, Kate and Geoff receive a letter that shatters their quiet routine. The body of Katya, Geoff’s first love, has been found perfectly preserved in the Alpine ice, fifty years after her death in an accident. This news brings to light a past Kate never knew, planting doubt and retrospective jealousy into a bond that seemed indestructible.
Andrew Haigh constructs a psychological thriller disguised as a domestic drama. The “ghost” of the past is not a supernatural presence, but an idea, a photograph, a memory that undoes decades of perceived stability. Charlotte Rampling’s masterful performance communicates a universe of uncertainty through micro-facial expressions, embodying the terror of discovering that the shared history upon which an entire life has been built might be a lie. The film explores the terrifying notion that you can never fully know another person, not even after a lifetime together.
Paterson (2016)
The film follows a week in the life of Paterson, a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, who writes poetry in his spare time. His life is marked by a reassuring routine: he wakes up next to his beloved wife Laura, drives his bus, listens to passengers’ conversations, writes in his secret notebook, and in the evening, walks the dog, stopping for a beer at the local bar.
Jim Jarmusch creates an ode to the beauty of the everyday and a portrait of a relationship based on an absolute lack of conflict. Paterson is an “anti-dramatic” film, where love is not manifested in grand gestures but in small daily acts of kindness, support, and mutual acceptance. The relationship between Paterson and his whimsical wife Laura is a haven of stability and creative encouragement. It is a celebration of mature love, the kind that finds poetry not in overwhelming passions, but in the comforting and silent harmony of the daily grind.
Call Me by Your Name (2017)
In the summer of 1983, seventeen-year-old Elio spends his holidays at his family’s villa in northern Italy. His lazy, cultured summer is turned upside down by the arrival of Oliver, a charming 24-year-old American student, who is staying with Elio’s father to assist with his academic research. An irresistible attraction develops between the two, which will blossom into an overwhelming and unforgettable first love.
Luca Guadagnino creates an immersive sensory experience that captures the very essence of first desire. The idyllic setting and the absence of a true external antagonist allow the film to focus entirely on the psychological and emotional dance between Elio and Oliver. More than a story, the film is a memory, an evocation of the vulnerability and intensity of a formative love. It is the portrait of a summer that, however brief, contains within it the echo of a lifetime, a feeling so powerful that it forever defines the perception of love and loss.
A Ghost Story (2017)
A musician, identified only as “C,” dies in a car accident. He returns to his suburban home as a ghost covered in a white sheet to comfort his grieving partner, “M.” Unable to communicate, he becomes a silent observer of her life as it moves on, remaining tied to that place while time around him warps, flowing through years, decades, and centuries.
David Lowery uses a bold and almost childlike image—the classic sheet ghost—to create a profound meditation on love, grief, and cosmic time. The ghost becomes a container for our projections of pain and loneliness. Through long takes and an elliptical sense of time, the film places us in the ghost’s perspective, making us experience love and loss not on a human scale, but a geological one. It is a poignant work on the meaning of “home” and the desire to leave a mark in an indifferent universe.
Shoplifters (2018)
On the outskirts of Tokyo, an improvised family survives on petty scams and shoplifting. Despite their poverty, the bond that unites its members is strong and affectionate. One evening, they take in a little girl found in the cold, a victim of abuse by her parents. Their precarious harmony is put to the test when an incident reveals the secrets that hold this unconventional unit together.
Hirokazu Kore-eda, Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, offers a touching counterpoint to films like Dogtooth. If Lanthimos shows a biological family that self-destructs through control, Kore-eda tells of a “chosen” family that is built through love, however imperfect and illegal. The film poses a fundamental question: “Does giving birth to a child automatically make you a mother?” In this way, it redefines the concepts of love and parental bonds beyond social and legal conventions, suggesting that true family is the one that welcomes you, not necessarily the one that generates you.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Brittany, 1770. The painter Marianne is hired to create the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman fresh out of a convent and reluctant to marry. Since Héloïse refuses to pose, Marianne must observe her by day and then paint her in secret at night. Between the two women, isolated on a windswept island, an intimacy of glances is born, which transforms into an intense and forbidden love.
Céline Sciamma directs a masterpiece on the “female gaze.” The film subverts the traditional artist-muse dynamic, transforming an act of objectification into a process of mutual observation and collaborative creation. Their love story is not just told, but built through the act of looking. Art becomes the tool to capture and preserve an ephemeral bond, turning memory into an act of resistance. The final portrait is not just an image, but a “souvenir” that transcends time and separation, an eternal testament to a love lived outside the rules.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Hong Kong, 1962. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan move into the same apartment building on the same day. They soon discover that their respective spouses, often away on business, are having an affair. Hurt and lonely, the two begin to see each other, finding comfort in one another, but they vow not to commit the same sin as their partners. Their bond grows in a limbo of unexpressed desire and missed opportunities.
Wong Kar-wai does not direct a film; he orchestrates a mood. The relationship between the protagonists exists almost entirely in the unsaid spaces, in stolen glances, in the melancholy of what could be. The director’s visual language—the tight shots that create a sense of emotional claustrophobia, the slow motion, the saturated colors, and Shigeru Umebayashi’s obsessive musical theme—transforms the narrative into a sensory experience of pure longing. It is a film not about the story of a love, but about the very emotion of repressed love itself.
Certified Copy (2010)
An English writer, James Miller, is in Tuscany to present his latest book, which discusses the value of the copy in art. There he meets Elle, a French gallery owner. They spend an afternoon together and, following a misunderstanding in a café, they begin to act as if they were a couple married for fifteen years, staging arguments, memories, and recriminations. But are they playing a game, or are they truly husband and wife?
Abbas Kiarostami constructs an intellectual and sentimental game that explores the very nature of reality and representation. The philosophical debate—the original versus the copy—becomes the very structure of the film. The central question is not so much “what is the truth?” but “does it matter?” Is a “copied” relationship, with all its baggage of shared history and staged emotions, any less authentic than an “original” one? Kiarostami leaves the viewer without a definitive answer, suggesting that, in art as in love, it is the lived experience—real or simulated—that truly counts.
Amour (2012)
Georges and Anne are a couple in their eighties, retired music teachers, cultured and deeply connected. Their quiet life is shattered when Anne suffers a stroke that leaves her partially paralyzed. As her condition inexorably worsens, their love is put to the ultimate test, forcing Georges to confront suffering, dignity, and final decisions.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Michael Haneke’s film is a lucid gaze, devoid of any sentimentality, on old age, illness, and death. Haneke confronts the physical and emotional reality of decline with an almost unbearable sincerity. Georges’s final act, shocking and ambiguous, is not simple euthanasia but the most complex and radical expression of love: a gesture that is both an act of extreme compassion to end Anne’s suffering and a selfish act to preserve the idealized memory of the woman he loved, before the illness erased her completely.
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Adam, a depressed and solitary underground musician, lives as a recluse in a spectral Detroit. Eve, his lover for centuries, lives in Tangier, immersed in literature. They are two ancient, cultured vampires, weary of the modern world and its inhabitants, whom they call “zombies.” Worried about Adam’s state of mind, Eve flies to him to reunite, rekindling a love that has spanned centuries.
Jim Jarmusch reinvents the vampire myth, transforming it into a metaphor for the alienated artist and intellectual. The film is a melancholy and incredibly stylish elegy on eternal love. The relationship between Adam and Eve is not defined by burning passion, but by a deep and comfortable complicity, a cultural and aesthetic understanding built over centuries of shared existence. Their bond is a fortress of art, music, and knowledge erected against a world that, in their eyes, has lost its beauty and meaning.
Anomalisa (2015)
Michael Stone, an author of books on customer service, is a deeply depressed and alienated man. During a business trip to Cincinnati, he experiences the world in a distressing way: all people, men and women, have the same face and the same voice. His perception changes radically when he hears the unique voice of Lisa, an insecure sales representative who is there to attend his conference.
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson use stop-motion to give shape to a state of mind. The choice to use a single voice actor (Tom Noonan) for all characters except the two protagonists is not a gimmick, but the literal representation of Michael’s solipsistic depression. In this homogenized and soulless world, Lisa’s voice becomes the most romantic and revolutionary sound possible. Their connection is a fragile and momentary escape from an oppressive sense of uniformity, a heartbreaking portrait of loneliness and the desperate human need to find someone who is, finally, different.
Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
Hannah is a recent graduate working as an intern at a production office in Chicago. Uncertain about her professional and romantic future, she drifts between three different relationships: one with her boyfriend Mike, and nascent ones with two of her colleagues, Matt and Paul. The film follows her conversations, her insecurities, and her attempts to find a direction in life.
This film is a manifesto of the Mumblecore movement, characterized by low budgets, improvised dialogue, and an almost documentary-like focus on the lives of twenty-somethings. The seemingly plotless structure and the rambling, awkward conversations are not a flaw but perfectly mirror the protagonist’s indecision. The form of the film is its content: the lack of a clear direction in the narrative is a metaphor for the lack of direction in Hannah’s life, as she seeks her own identity through unstable and confused bonds.
Drinking Buddies (2013)
Kate and Luke work together at a craft brewery and are best friends. Their complicity is evident, made up of jokes, beers, and an unconfessed mutual attraction. The problem is that they are both in other relationships: Kate with the more mature Chris, and Luke with his long-term girlfriend Jill, who wants to get married. A weekend at a lake house will test the boundaries between friendship and love.
Joe Swanberg brings the themes of Mumblecore to maturity, applying them to a more complex relational dynamic. The film subverts the expectations of the romantic comedy, refusing the easy resolution of “and they lived happily ever after.” The real tension is not in wondering if Kate and Luke will end up together, but whether their friendship, so precious and deep, can survive the romantic potential that both, more or less consciously, repress. It is a nuanced and realistic analysis of the gray areas of adult relationships, where the boundaries are never clear.
The Souvenir (2019)
London, 1980s. Julie, a young and shy film student from a wealthy family, falls in love with Anthony, an older, charismatic, and mysterious man who works at the Foreign Office. Their relationship, initially idyllic, soon proves to be toxic and co-dependent when Julie discovers that Anthony is a heroin addict. The destructive bond will have a profound impact on her life and her artistic growth.
Joanna Hogg directs a semi-autobiographical work of disarming sincerity. The film’s observational and almost detached style perfectly captures the insidious nature of a toxic relationship, where love and manipulation are inextricably intertwined. Julie’s journey is that of a young woman who finds her voice as an artist not despite, but through this painful experience. Her suffering becomes the raw material for the film she is trying to make, posing the difficult question about the relationship between pain and artistic creation.
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
This documentary follows the tumultuous forty-year relationship between Japanese artists Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, immigrants in New York. Ushio is the “boxer,” an avant-garde painter known for creating artworks by punching the canvas. Noriko is “Cutie,” his wife and long-time assistant, who finally finds her own artistic voice through a series of autobiographical drawings that tell the story of their life together.
Zachary Heinzerling’s film is the real-life portrait of the themes explored fictionally in The Souvenir. It is a complex analysis of an artistic marriage, a mixture of deep love, resentment, sacrifice, and creative rivalry. Noriko’s art, with her characters “Cutie” and “Bullie,” becomes her tool to reclaim her identity and narrate her version of the story, after decades spent in the shadow of a cumbersome and famous husband. It is a powerful testimony of how art can be born from conflict and become a form of emotional survival.
Fire of Love (2022)
Through extraordinary archival footage, the documentary tells the story of the life and love of French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. For two decades, the couple traveled the world, chasing volcanic eruptions and filming breathtaking, never-before-seen images. Their shared passion for volcanoes was the foundation of their bond, a three-way love affair that led them to push ever closer to danger, until their tragic death in 1991.
Sara Dosa constructs an unforgettable portrait of a relationship in which love and vocation are indistinguishable. The shared passion is not just a backdrop but the very fabric of their bond. Using the incredible footage shot by the Kraffts themselves, the film becomes a unique love letter, addressed not only to each other but also to the primordial forces of nature that fascinated them. It is the story of a bond forged in fire, wonder, and constant danger.
My Love, Don’t Cross That River (2013)
This South Korean documentary follows for fifteen months the daily life of Jo Byeong-man and Kang Kye-yeol, a couple married for 76 years. He is 98, she is 89. They live in a small mountain village, wearing matching traditional clothes and sharing a tenderness and playfulness that seem like those of two young lovers. The film captures their small gestures of affection as they face together the inevitability of old age and final separation.
In stark contrast to the almost clinical lucidity of Amour, this documentary offers a gentle and observational portrait of the reality of the end of life. Its strength lies in finding profound emotion in the simplest gestures: a snowball fight, holding hands, taking care of each other. It is a moving testimony to the beauty of lasting love, a love that is not measured in dramatic events, but in the constancy of a silent and devoted companionship in the face of mortality.
I Lost My Body (2019)
A severed hand escapes from a dissection lab in Paris, embarking on a perilous journey across the city to reunite with its body. During its adventure, the hand remembers moments of its past life, connected to the young Naoufel. The flashbacks reveal the story of Naoufel, an orphaned and lonely boy, and his shy, budding love for the librarian Gabrielle, a relationship born through an intercom.
Animation allows Jérémy Clapin to transform a potentially macabre premise into a poetic and melancholic reflection on loss and the search for completeness. The hand’s journey is not just physical; it becomes a powerful metaphor for Naoufel’s emotional journey. It is the search for a lost connection, an attempt to put back together the pieces of an existence fragmented by trauma. The delicate and uncertain love story is the pulsating heart of this search for wholeness.
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Julie is about to turn thirty and her life is a mess. Over the course of four years, she navigates complicated relationships, constantly changes her field of study and career path, and struggles with societal expectations and her own existential uncertainties. Her story unfolds mainly through two important relationships: one with Aksel, a successful comic book artist older than her, and one with Eivind, a simpler and more spontaneous guy.
This film by Joachim Trier is the perfect concluding chapter for our guide, as it encapsulates many of the themes explored. Its chapter-based structure and its mix of realism and moments of surreal fantasy (like the famous scene where time stops) perfectly reflect the restlessness and fragmentation of the millennial mindset. It is a sharp and compassionate portrait of the search for identity, the difficulty of commitment, and the fear of making the wrong choice in an age of seemingly infinite possibilities, offering a bittersweet look at love and loss.
Dogtooth (2009)
Three teenage siblings live in an isolated house with their parents, who have raised them without any contact with the outside world. Their upbringing is based on bizarre rules and an altered vocabulary, where words like “sea” or “zombie” take on completely different meanings. The balance of this closed system is threatened when the father brings in a woman from the outside to satisfy his son’s sexual urges.
Although not a couple’s film in the classic sense, Dogtooth is a fundamental analysis of relationships taken to their most perverse extreme. The parents’ bond is that of two jailers who have turned the family into a totalitarian state. The children’s relationships are atrophied, shaped by absolute control. Lanthimos’s work represents the terrifying endpoint of a couple’s bond founded not on love, but on fear, domination, and the construction of a fictitious reality, serving as a dark warning about how power dynamics can corrupt the most intimate bonds.
Boyhood (2014)
Filmed over twelve years with the same actors, the film follows the life of Mason, from childhood to his first day of college. Through his eyes, we observe the changes, the small joys, and the great sorrows of his family: his sister Samantha, his mother Olivia who struggles to build a career and find a stable partner, and his father Mason Sr., an initially absent figure who slowly matures into his parental role.
Richard Linklater accomplishes an unprecedented cinematic feat, but the true miracle of Boyhood lies in its ability to capture the evolution of relationships over time. In particular, the relationship between the divorced parents, Olivia and Mason Sr., is a nuanced and realistic portrait. It moves from post-divorce tension to a form of mature and supportive friendship. The film shows how love does not necessarily end with the end of a marriage but can transform into a different form of care and respect, a bond redefined by the shared experience of parenthood.
A vision curated by a filmmaker, not an algorithm
In this video I explain our vision
