Romance

Our romance collection highlights the timeless eloquence of love on screen, from passionate love affairs and sweeping period dramas to quirky rom-coms and tales of longing, lust, and desire.

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  • 5x2

    Five milestone scenes from a couple’s life – from that giddy first meeting through to marriage, birth, infidelity and annulment – are painfully played out in reverse chronological order in François Ozon’s keen examination of the theatrical nature of relationships. With the benefit of hindsight, t...

  • Water Drops on Burning Rocks

    Fassbinder wrote the script for his first full-length play when he was 19, the same age as Franz (Malik Zidi) when he is picked up by the worldly Léopold (Bernard Giraudeau), and seduced into a relationship that soon sours. As Franz’s naïve fiancée Anna and Léo’s former lover Véra turn up at thei...

  • Merci Pour Le Chocolat (aka Nightcap)

    Isabelle Huppert stars as the wife of a concert pianist who discovers some unusual secrets about her husband's past, in Claude Chabrol's deliciously icy mystery.

  • Darling

    When she meets a hip television director, a young woman is swept into the world of London's lavish sixties nightlife. However, her lust to belong to the scene doesn't even begin to quench her thirst for fun, as she drifts from clique to clique looking for an unattainable sense of belonging.

  • Merci la vie

    When naïve teenager Camille (Charlotte Gainsbourg in one of her earliest roles) comes across Joëlle (Anouk Grinberg), a young woman who has just been unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, the two soon form a fast friendship. Guiding her new friend through the darker side of sex and men, Joëlle...

  • Perversion Story

    George Dumurrier (Sorel), a doctor based in San Francisco, is accused of murdering his wife (Marisa Mell) to solve his extramarital and financial affairs. When he and his lover run into her doppelgänger Monica at a high-class strip club, he is both shocked and beguiled, but desperate to uncover t...

  • Max mon amour

    When British diplomat Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) suspects his wife (Charlotte Rampling, playing it totally straight) of infidelity, he is stunned to discover that the ‘other man’ is a chimpanzee. On a whim, he invites his hairy rival to move into the luxurious family home – more out of curiosi...

  • Sitcom

    When the father of a stereotypical middle-class French family brings home a pet rat, he triggers a surge of orgies, incest and murder within his prim and polished suburban home. François Ozon (Swimming Pool) displays hints of Luis Buñuel and John Waters in his anarchic takedown of the middle-clas...

  • After Love

    Joanna Scanlan earned her Bafta for leading actress for playing Mary Hussain, a Dover housewife who’s newly widowed and now baffled by the discovery of her late husband’s secret connection across the Channel, in Calais. Armed with just a bag and his mobile phone, she sets off to uncover the truth...

  • The Day the Earth Caught Fire

    When the USA and Russia simultaneously test atomic bombs, the Earth is knocked off its axis and set on a collision course with the Sun. Peter Stenning (Edward Judd), a washed-up Daily Express reporter, breaks the story and sets about investigating the government cover-up.

  • Saraband for Dead Lovers

    This agreeably murky tale of court intrigue, corruption and sexual manipulation is a rare excursion for Ealing into historical drama. Peter Bull and Joan Greenwood are perfectly cast as the dissolute Prince George-Louis and his reluctant bride Sophie Dorothea. Shooting in colour for the first tim...

  • Le Mépris

    Based on Moravia’s novel, Jean-Luc Godard’s sardonic look at the world of filmmaking boasts superb performances by Michel Piccoli as a compromised writer, Brigitte Bardot as his bored wife, Jack Palance as a manipulative producer and Fritz Lang as himself, about to film Homer’s Odyssey in Cinecit...

  • Man Up

    Simon Pegg plays Jack, a recent divorcee whose blind date is hijacked by jaded singleton Nancy (Lake Bell). When Nancy makes no effort to correct him, a surprisingly successful date night ensues, until it’s time for her to fess up...