Everyone dreams of love, real, sincere and devoted, but not everyone meets such a feeling in reality. Probably, that’s why movies about unrequited love attract so many viewers. Such films evoke a whole ocean of feelings, make viewers cry and laugh, and empathize with the main characters.
The Great Gatsby
- IMDB Rating – 7.2
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama
- Production: Australia, USA / 2013
- Budget: $105,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $353,641,895
- Director: Baz Luhrmann
- Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, Callan McAuliffe, Jack Thompson, Amitabh Bachchan
Scandalous journalist and aspiring writer Nick Carraway moves to New York City and buys a lakeside home near the luxurious mansion of millionaire Jay Gatsby, known for his extravagant antics. On the other side of the lake lives Jay’s cousin, Daisy, and her husband, the aristocrat, bon vivant and ladies’ man Tom Buchanan.
Unwittingly, Nick witnesses the development of relationships between the rich and powerful of this world. Nick later writes a bestselling novel about unrequited love, shattered dreams and windblown hopes.
This novel by American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald was first screened in 1926.
Flipped
- IMDB Rating – 7.7
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama, Comedy
- Production: USA / 2010
- Budget: $14,000,000
- US box office receipts: $1,755,212
- Director: Rob Reiner
- Starring: Madeleine Carroll, Callan McAuliffe, Aidan Quinn, Penelope Ann Miller, John Mahoney, Rebecca De Mornay, Anthony Edwards, Kevin Wiseman, Michael Bolten, Cody Horn.
A very young girl Julie Baker falls in love with one of the most prominent guys of the school Bryce Loski, but he pays absolutely no attention to the girl. Julie suffers silently and tries in every way to attract the young man’s attention to her person.
But in high school the situation changes. Now the young man is not on a joke Julie is attracted to him. But she only laughs back at him – her feelings have almost faded.
The filmmakers moved the action fifty years into the future.
La migliore offerta
- IMDB Rating – 7.8
- Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime
- Production: Italy / 2012
- Budget: €13,500,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $20,596,350
- Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
- Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hooks, Donald Sutherland, Philip Jackson, Dermot Crowley, Kiruna Stamell, Leah Kebede, Caterina Capodilista, Gen Seto
Virgil Oldman, an old and lonely but rich auctioneer, does not let anyone into his life. He lives all alone in his luxurious mansion, he has no relatives and friends, and he does not try to get them.
But unexpectedly Virgil meets a girl named Claire. She suffers from agoraphobia, that is, afraid of open space, and almost never leaves the house. The girl plays a skillful game with an elderly auctioneer, and he quickly falls in love with her. He invites her to his house, shows her his collections and reveals the secrets of the security alarm system.
The movie ends with the girl taking away the entire collection of paintings, leaving only one – a portrait of a stranger, as if hinting that the old auctioneer is only suitable for such a woman.
This movie on UK screens went with the title “Deception”.
The Painted Veil
- IMDB Rating – 7.5
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama
- Production: USA, Canada, China / 2006
- Budget: $34,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $26,522,838
- Director: John Curran
- Starring: Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Diana Rigg, Toby Jones, Catherine En, Li Bin, Bin Wu, Alan David, Marie-Laure Dikuru.
Walter Fane is passionately in love with his wife Kitty, and unexpectedly learns of her infidelity. Walter is shocked by the betrayal of the woman he has previously idolized and decides to take revenge on her. He travels to China, where a cholera epidemic is raging, and forces the woman to go with him.
Kitty protests at first, but after her lover leaves her, she agrees to go with her husband. In China, the young woman looks at her husband with different eyes; he now seems to her to be the savior of mankind. She realizes the pain she has caused him. But Walter dies of cholera, and Kitty returns to England, but now she is a different woman.
Initially for the role of the main character tried Nicole Kidman, but then the actor who performs the main male role – Edward Norton, himself approved for this role Naomi Watts.
Wicker Park
- IMDB Rating – 7.0
- Genre: Thriller, Drama, Melodrama, Detective
- Production: USA / 2004
- Budget: $30,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $21,568,818
- Director: Paul McGuigan
- Starring: Josh Hartnett, Rose Byrne, Matthew Lillard, Diane Kruger, Christopher Cousins, Jessica Paré, Vlasta Vrana, Amy Sobol, Ted Whittell, Isabel Dos Santos.
Young people Matthew and Lisa are in love and live together. But the young man is offered a place in New York, and he does not want to go without his favorite girl. Lisa hesitates for a long time, and then suddenly disappears. Matthew decides that she left him and leaves alone. But two years later he sees Lisa in one of the restaurants.
Former feelings flare up again, young people spend the night together, but now Matthew is sure that in front of him is not Lisa, but a completely different girl. At this very moment strange events begin to happen in his life, but the desire to discover the truth is stronger than the arguments of reason.
The movie Obsession is a remake of the 1996 French film The Apartment.
Wonder Wheel
- IMDB Rating – 6.2
- Genre: Drama
- Production: USA / 2017
- Budget: $25,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $15,889,124
- Director: Woody Allen
- Starring: Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple, Robert S. Kirk, Kate Winslet, James Belushi, Jack Gore, Tommy Nohilly, Tony Sirico, Steve Schirripa, John Doumagnan.
The famous Coney Island is a vacation destination for millions of Americans. In this park you can take a boat ride, dine in a small cafe, enjoy ice cream and cold drinks, and ride rides. The most popular is a huge Ferris wheel called “Wonder Wheel”.
A young girl witnesses a gangster showdown, she runs in fear to her father on Coney Island for rescue. But the gangsters are not going to let the witness live.
This is a story of betrayals and mad passion involving four young men. Fate unexpectedly brought them together in one in a famous vacation park.
The Wonder Wheel, installed on Long Island back in the ’50s, has been given a second name – Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower.
Mal de pierres
- IMDB Rating – 6.6
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama
- Production: France, Belgium, Canada, Spain / 2016
- Budget: €10,300,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $6,547,983
- Director: Nicole Garcia
- Starring: Marion Cotillard, Louis Garrel, Alex Brendemuhl, Brigitte Royan, Victoire Du Bois, Aloys Savage, Daniel Para, Jihwan Kim, Victor Quilichini, Ange Black-Bereitiat
South coast of France, 50s. A very young girl named Gabriella dreams of true love, for the sake of which it is not a pity to give one’s life. But people around her consider her dreams crazy and indecent. The girl’s parents, in order to keep her from inappropriate actions, marry her off to a suitable, in their opinion, man. Gabriella’s young husband is a good and loving man, but for her this marriage is like a prison cell.
Some time later Gabriella goes to a sanatorium for treatment and there she meets her true love – a veteran of the Indochina War named Andre. The lovers are going to escape from reality together and immerse themselves in their illusory world of true love.
The movie is based on the novel by Italian writer Milena Agus, in the original it has the title “Stone Sickness”.
Waiting for Forever
- IMDB Rating – 6.0
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama, Comedy
- Production: USA / 2009
- Budget: $5,000,000
- US box office receipts: $25,517
- Director: James Keach
- Starring: Rachel Bilson, Tom Sturridge, Richard Jenkins, Blythe Danner, Matthew Davis, Scott Mechlowitz, Jamie King, Nikki Blonsky, Nelson Franklin, Richard Gant.
The main character of the movie Will Donner is a young man without ambitions, without special goals in life, without a normal job. He himself does not understand what he wants to achieve in life. As a child he experienced a severe drama, but his girlfriend Emma Twist was there to help him through a difficult crisis.
Years later Emma left her hometown and became a movie star. But here her father dies and the girl returns for a while. Will decides to open her feelings, but whether he has the guts to approach Emma, who has achieved everything on her own. And does Emma herself remember her childhood friend?
This movie did not pay for itself – the audience found the movie boring and deliberately drawn out. But for middle-aged people, this movie made a great impression.
(500) Days of Summer
- IMDB Rating – 7.7
- Genre: Melodrama, comedy
- Production: USA / 2009
- Budget: $7,500,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $60,722,734
- Director: Marc Webb
- Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Jeffrey Arend, Chloe Grace Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Patricia Belcher, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Charles Walker
Young people Tom and Summer met by chance and a spark ran between them. They went to the movies, to cafes, took walks together and made love. After a while, Tom realized that he loved the girl and proposed to her.
But the girl answered with a refusal, she did not love him at all, but only spent time. Tom agonizingly tries to understand where he made a mistake and why love never entered his life.
The creators of the movie, wanting to give the movie a classic look, shot only buildings built in the 50s. For the same reason, the main characters do not use cell phones.
Mon roi
- IMDB Rating – 7.1
- Genre: Drama, melodrama
- Production: France / 2015
- Worldwide Box Office: $8,003,331
- Director: Maiwenn
- Starring: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Bercot, Louis Garrel, Isilde Le Besco, Christelle Saint Louis Augustin, Patrick Reynal, Yann Gauvin, Paul Ami, Jamel Barek, Slim El Headley
A couple of young people meet in a bar one night and they instantly feel passion for each other. Probably because this feeling scares them, they behave like crazy, but the romance quickly develops.
And here they are already living together. It would seem that it is possible to be happy, but this couple then loves, then hates, then insanely jealous, then ignores each other. The appearance of a baby only exacerbates the problems in this family. Both spouses are trying to bend their partner under themselves, to change him.
And over time they realize that they know very little about each other and even after 10 years of life together have not given information about the inner world of each other.
Vincent Cassel, who played the main role, is in good athletic shape and tells everyone that he has kept a great figure only because he constantly makes love.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- IMDB Rating – 8.0
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama
- Production: USA / 2012
- Budget: $13,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $33,384,127
- Director: Stephen Chbosky
- Starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Nina Dobrev, Dylan McDermott, Kate Walsh, Paul Rudd, Mae Whitman, Adam Haganbuch, Johnny Simmons.
Charlie is a college freshman in Pittsburgh. He is modest, quiet, and not popular with the opposite sex. He wants to find friends who will understand him and accept him for who he is. But his best friend commits suicide, and Charlie needs to get over it somehow.
Two high school students Sam and Patrick take Charlie under their patronage and bring him into the world of adults, cruel and aggressive. Before the eyes of the audience the young man is growing up, his inner view of the world and life values are changing.
Stephen Chbosky, the author of the book, then wrote the screenplay for the movie and then went on to direct the picture himself.
Homecoming
- IMDB Rating – 5.3
- Genre: Thriller, Drama
- Production: USA / 2008
- Budget: $1,500,000
- US box office receipts: $8,500,000
- Director: Morgan J. Freeman
- Starring: Mischa Barton, Matt Long, Jessica Strope, Michael Landis, Allen Williamson, Joshua Reese, Nick Pascal, Joey Forgione, Alex Hooper, Cassandra Nentwig.
Shelby and Michael once loved each other, but had a fight and broke up. Michael left, and Shelby became the owner of a large motel. After a while Michael returns to his hometown with a new friend Elizabeth, he is going to introduce the girl to his parents.
Shelby tries in vain to make peace with her former lover, he is firmly determined to get engaged to Elizabeth. Then Shelby comes up with a cunning and dangerous plan. She is driven to despair by Michael’s refusal and decides to kidnap Elizabeth, make her her hostage, and deceive her lover by saying that his new bride has run away with her ex-boyfriend.
This movie was made in only 32 days, filming in Paris took only 5 days.
Be my Cyril
- IMDB Rating – 6.2
- Genre: Comedy
- Production: Russia / 2021
- Worldwide Box Office: $204,850
- Director: Alla Eliseeva
- Starring: Vitaly Semenovs, Anastasia Evgrafova, Anna Antonova, Ivan Mulin, Sergey Stepin, Irina Rozanova, Katerina Reshnova, Sergey Godin, Tatiana Ukharova, Galina Averyanova
Sasha is a modest and even shy girl, she is not sure of her attractiveness and has no personal life. To deceive her relatives she says that she is dating Kirill – a very popular young man, a running coach.
Dad is Sasha’s sister’s husband and his family life is not working out. He alone knows Sasha’s secret and helps her, as best he can, to establish a relationship with Kirill. She, in turn, wants to help Paul to establish relations with his sister. The friendship of these two people soon grows into something more.
The director believed that the performers of the main roles should be friends to create the right energy on the set, so Anastasia Evgrafova and Vitalis Semenovsu had to spend a lot of time together.
Un balcon sur la mer
- IMDB Rating – 6.2
- Genre: Thriller, Drama, Melodrama, Detective
- Production: France / 2010
- Director: Nicole Garcia
- Starring: Jean Dujardin, Marie-Josée Crozet, Tony Servillo, Sandrine Kiberlain, Michel Aumont, Pauline Bellet, Jacques Valles, Claudia Cardinale, Romain Millau, Solene Forvaye.
Marc is a successful real estate agent, he lives in a beautiful place in the south of France, has a loving wife and beautiful children. Everything in his life is adjusted and obeyed once and for all the established order.
But one day he meets a girl who is like two drops of water similar to his first love Kati, with whom he met in Algeria.
But the girl suddenly disappears, and Mark begins to be tormented by doubts: whether it is really the same person. The man decides to start his own investigation.
The filmmakers managed to subtly intertwine past and present, dreams and real life, and even France and Algeria.
La vie d’Adèle
- IMDB Rating – 7.7
- Genre: Drama, melodrama
- Production: France, Belgium, Spain / 2013
- Budget: €4,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $19,465,835
- Director: Abdelatif Keshish
- Starring: Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Salim Keshush, Aurélien Recoin, Catherine Salé, Benjamin Cixous, Mona Valravens, Alma Chodorowski, Jérémie Laertes, Anne Loiret.
Young Adele dreams of the unearthly love she has read about in books. Soon she meets a young man with whom they begin a relationship.
But suddenly Adele begins to have strange and frightening dreams involving a girl with blue hair. This girl Adele accidentally saw on the street. And now Adele begins to understand that it is not the strange color of the stranger’s hair that attracts her, but the girl herself.
There was no hairdresser or makeup artist on set, and the actresses were not allowed to wear makeup most of the time.
Les Misérables
- IMDB Rating – 7.6
- Genre: Musical, Drama, Melodrama
- Production: UK, USA / 2012
- Budget: $61,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $441,809,770
- Director: Tom Hooper
- Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Aaron Tveit, Samantha Barks, Daniel Huttlestone
France, 19th century. Jean Valjean and Fantine are madly in love with each other, but they are poor people and must constantly fight for a place in the sun. When their daughter was born, it became even more difficult. Fantine was forced to give the girl to strangers. Soon the woman dies, and Jean goes to prison.
Jean Volzhan escapes from prison to find his daughter and protect her from evil, because he sees it as his duty to his dead beloved. And policeman Javert sees the purpose of his life in order to find the escaped fugitive and return him to prison.
Who of them will be right and who will be guilty? Will Jean Voljean be able to escape the laws of the state and give happiness to his daughter?
For filming in this movie Hugh Jackman lost more than 30 kg of weight, as well as purposely did not drink water for 24 hours to have a weary look of a prisoner.
Les bien-aimés
- IMDB Rating – 6.2
- Genre: Musical, Drama, Melodrama, Comedy
- Production: France, UK, Czech Republic / 2011
- Budget: $9,980,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $1,662,013
- Director: Christophe Honoré
- Starring: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Ludivine Saunier, Louis Garrel, Milos Forman, Paul Schneider, Michel Delpesh, Radivoye Boukvic, Omar Ben Sellem, Dustin Segura-Suarez.
This movie shows several crazy love stories that take over a person completely and drive him crazy.
The saleswoman Madeleine has a caring husband and a young daughter. She is quite happy, but she is completely taken over by a mad passion for a young doctor. She leaves her husband and throws herself into the maelstrom of a new relationship. But the former husband is not going to retreat, he pursues Madeleine, looking for a meeting, wants to understand why their life so suddenly collapsed.
Madeleine’s daughter Vera has grown up and fallen in love with a homosexual drummer. Her passion cannot find an answer, the girl is unhappy and wants to commit suicide, seeing no meaning in life.
Madeleine, fleeing from her problems, goes (rather – runs away) to Paris – to the place where she was once happy.
This movie has a real constellation of great actors – Catherine Deneuve, her daughter Chiara Mastroianni and Milos Forman, mother and daughter in life play mother and daughter in the movie.
The Half of It
- IMDB Rating – 6.9
- Genre: Drama, Melodrama, Comedy
- Production: USA / 2020
- Director: Alice Wu
- Starring: Daniel Deemer, Lea Lewis, Becky Ann Baker, Alexis Lemire, Colin Chow, Wolfgang Novogratz, Enrique Murciano, McIntyre Dixon, Katie Curtin, Alec Tincher.
A high school athlete is in love with a popular beauty who he doesn’t expect to win the girl’s affection. But he comes up with a plan that can help him win the girl’s favor. He hires Alice, an excellent student, to play the game of love with her.
But soon Alice realizes that her heart is occupied, not by a handsome athlete, but by a young girl. This is a movie about love, tenderness, friendship and loyalty. It’s about the fact that love is born regardless of gender.
Interestingly, even among tolerant Americans, this movie received very mixed reviews from audiences and critics alike.
A photo for bad memories
- IMDB Rating – 6.6
- Genre: Melodrama, Crime
- Production: Russia / 2016
- Director: Alina Chebotareva
- Starring: Irina Tarannik, Timofei Karataev, Alexander Davydov, Victoria Litvinenko-Yasinovskaya, Valeria Gulyaeva, Dmitry Sova, Olga Radchuk, Irina Melnik, Eugene Lebedin, Alexander Yarema
Masha is in love with her classmate Igor, but the young man is not going to commit his life to her. Then Masha decides to marry the first man she meets to spite her lover. This spurs Igor, but Masha herself does not know what she wants.
However, the groom disappears just before the wedding. Probably, everything would have ended like that, if not for an old photo, which a few years later will completely change the lives of the heroes.
Love
- IMDB Rating – 6.1
- Genre: Drama, melodrama
- Production: France, Belgium / 2015
- Budget: $3,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $861,057
- Director: Gaspar Noé
- Starring: Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyok, Clara Christine, Hugo Fox, Juan Saavedra, Gaspar Noé, Benoit Debi, Vincent Maraval, Deborah Revy
Love is not subject to any human laws; it exists on its own, beyond good and evil. On a cold January morning, a sharp phone call wakes up the couple Murphy and Omi. Ahead is a boring gray day, which are many in life, and this day Murphy will spend in everyday worries and memories of his only love.
