10 cynical movies about romance

October 09, 2024

“Love” is a big word and an even bigger concept. Its abstractness has provided a rich soil for history’s most enduring art. Its definition is arguable, so some might not even find the movies on this list romantic at all, but, like it or not, it is also comprehensive, so that even the wildest movie that you can think of right now can somehow also be labeled as a love story.

Take This Waltz (2012)

Sarah Polley is one of the great underappreciated directors making movies today. She has a very unique style of handling love stories, capturing both aspects of the excitement of new feelings and the heartbreak of the inevitable end of all relationships. She seems convinced—and if you see Stories We Tell, her documentary from 2012, maybe it’s clear why she thinks this way—that all romantic relationships are essentially sad, that despite how it appears at the outset, all romance is actually tragedy. This is kind of the idea of Romeo and Juliet, but it’s an idea that movies don’t express very often, and maybe they’re not particularly well suited to.

Take This Waltz is just a marvelous little film about the way relationships can and often do end: unceremoniously, untidily, unfortunately, unavoidably. Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen are pretty fantastic in their portrayal of a romance that is over for one of them before the other even realizes it. Williams especially does some incredible work as Margot, who seems far younger than the actress usually plays, or perhaps is only meant to seem naive. Her disillusionment with the fresh-faced suitor she picks up with is the kicker here, revealing the certain level of dissatisfaction that accompanies every relationship. It’s a romance that ends in the tragedy of finding out your perceived “special connection” is just like anything else.

500 Days of Summer (2009)

This may seem like an unusual choice to list among cynical romance movies. It tends to be listed among the most romantic movies of the past few decades. And this is appropriate, but maybe not in the way most people seem to think. For those of us who think romance is heavily steeped in BS (not always in a bad way), 500 Days of Summer is so, so brilliant for its ability to expose the amount of delusion that goes along with romantic interest in another person. It’s done with more subtlety than people realize or give it credit here, though. The clearest moment is the famous split-screen scene depicting “Expectations” and “Reality,” and how little they aligned for the Joseph Gordon-Levitt character.

It’s from there that we begin to realize the highly subjective perspective we’ve been watching from is Tom’s (if the dance number didn’t give it away), and the big reveal that’s done almost indistinguishably at the end is that he has basically sugar-coated their entire relationship, seeing it through the prism of his own rose-colored viewpoint and at the movie’s end we see those glasses come off.

Summer was always sort of cold and indifferent towards him. The romance was never what he thought it was. And so while we’ve witnessed so many sweet little moments between the two of them, it’s unclear how many of them actually happened, or were as sweet as Tom thought. The lesson that romance is largely delusional is pretty cynical, but at least when Tom meets Autumn the movie ends on a slightly hopeful note. Or maybe it’s that he’s still hopelessly deluded.

Blue Valentine (2010)

This is one of the most devastatingly sad movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not to be watched if you’re looking for something light, to harbor good feelings. It’s downright depressing. But that’s just because it’s more brutally honest than most films allow themselves to be when it comes to romance and the fallout that so commonly occurs but is seldom represented this candidly on screen.

It’s a tough bit of cinema to capture in words, but there’s something about the way this movie represents just the progression of the dynamics of a relationship that seems to capture so much truth to it. Michelle Williams — yeah, her again — is incredible. Her character is sort of an emotional wreck and doesn’t exactly get a lot of support from her partner played by Ryan Gosling. They’re doomed from the beginning, drawn to one another for mysterious reasons but incapable of communicating with each other in a meaningful way, leading to inevitable tensions, distance, and sadness. They speak different love languages, it would seem. Gary Chapman would recognize this from the start. The other tragedy of stories like these is that long after the romance is gone, the relationship is drawn out longer and longer, stretching so far that it has to reach a breaking point. God, this is some bleak stuff. But devastatingly true.

Closer (2004)

Closer is a sharp, smooth, sleek sort of film that features four fairly awful people falling in and out of love with one another. The dialogue is shocking at times and has a flow that feels like it comes from a theater play, which it does. It’s incredibly smart and smartly made, each scene building in intensity carried by the stellar cast.

Ultimately it seems to be about the lies we tell ourselves and one another in matters of romance. There are three characters that seem to operate exclusively in lies, only using truth when it is most hurtful to their partner. Then there’s one character that is honest, but really only honest about how much she lies. It’s fascinating, brutal, and hugely pessimistic about the way relationships are conducted by most people who seem to have everything put together.

Away From Her (2006)

So you know how The Notebook has this following that hails it as the greatest movie of all time? Yeah, I don’t really care much for it. That may come as a shock. However, what I did find incredibly compelling about it was the story featuring the elderly couple dealing with Alzheimer’s which served as the premise for the romance story between the Gosling/McAdams characters. I thought that if the whole movie had been about those two adorable old folks I would have really enjoyed it, or found it tragically interesting. Then I saw Away From Her and had these wishes granted.

It’s the debut from director Sarah Polley, who, if you haven’t heard of her before, is pretty awesome at making movies. If we accept her premise that all romance is actually tragedy, then this is one of those cases, described by Louis CK, wherein we have a best-case romantic scenario. Two people were able to find each other and come together in love and marriage, live many happy years together, and then what do they gain from all this good fortune? Heartbreak. Gordon Pinsent has to deal with the loss of his partner played by Julie Christie, not in death at this point but in a tragic disease that has robbed her of the person she once was, and the life they once had together. Makes you think maybe there really is no such thing as happily ever after.

Scenes from a Marriage (1974)

Scenes from a Marriage is perhaps the archetypal cynical romance film. Initially conceived as a television series that aired from April to May of 1973 in Sweden, the six episodes were eventually condensed into a 167-minute-long theatrical cut. In 2021, HBO released an American remake of the original series starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, which provides a more modern, updated perspective on a timeless subject matter: marriage.

Following the lives and relationship of Marianne (Liv Ullmann), a divorce lawyer, and Johan (Erland Josephson), a psychology professor, over ten years, this Ingmar Bergman masterwork looks closely at the trials and tribulations of a time-worn marriage. Its striking and realistic approach to the small cracks that develop over time and eventually threaten the foundation of a relationship was linked to both an uptick in divorces and couple therapy appointments in Sweden in the year following its release. While Bergman is, nevertheless, empathetic to his characters and their flaws throughout, never trapping them in any pre-set archetypes and always making sure to provide context and emotional complexity, the film is still an unrelenting depiction of the hopelessness of long-lasting love (or at least a big enough amount of it to overcome the much uglier emotions that had been hidden by it during the honeymoon phase).

Before Midnight (2013)

If you’re looking for something more recent, Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, co-written by the two lead actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, was highly influenced by Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage — the minimalistic production, character and dialogue-focused script, and complicated, borderline hateful marriage are all there. What is it about time that chips away at everything we once loved about a person? This is a terrifying question for anyone still in a happy relationship who decides to watch either of these movies. Thankfully, though, they also offer a lot of answers by almost clinically analyzing the toxic behaviors that kill the spark and build resentment between two people.

The Before series has it all. The opener, Before Sunrise, featuring Delpy and Hawke in their 20s as Céline and Jesse, is one of the most sweep-you-off-your-feet butterflies-in-belly romantic movies of all time. Before Sunset is the passionate, mature companion that depicts the couple’s reunion ten years later. And Before Midnight kind of ruins everything by shedding any kind of idealistic, movie-like perspective on love, to offer a deeply cynical, bitter depiction of marriage. It does leave a bad taste in the mouths of anyone tuning into these films hoping for a grand love story, but the final chapter has been hailed exactly for its “realistic” (I would argue it’s more “pessimistic”) outlook on marriage.

Fair Play (2023)

While Fair Play is the furthest thing from a romance on this list, when we meet Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) they’re deeply in love, engaged to be married, and mad about one another. The actors’ chemistry is so strong and convincing that we’re quickly lulled into a false sense of security about their relationship. What follows is a brutal descent into the darkest corners of their souls and the implosion of their apparently perfect love story all because of one little trigger: Emily gets promoted at the big-shot investment company they both work for, and Luke doesn’t.

While Fair Play wavers in the precision and subtlety of its dialogue and narrative, threading the line between a David Fincher-esque psychological thriller the likes of Gone Girl and the gratuitous salaciousness of a Colleen Hoover novel, the premise of the film and its fascinating execution, up to a point, are enough to justify giving it a watch. Director Chloe Domont examines the effects that a tilt in the power dynamics of a heterosexual couple in favor of the woman can have on a seemingly passionate and happy relationship. What makes it all the more disturbing to watch is that all of Luke’s increasingly deranged behavior feels so incredibly realistic, especially for a female audience trained to manage the fragile egos of men they both work and live with, in whatever capacity. It’s not perfect, but it’s surely refreshing.

Happy Together (1997)

What’s more cynical than loving someone about as much as you hate them? What if you’re crazy about this person while simultaneously going insane over their less ideal traits and quirks? Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 jewel Happy Together tries to imagine a love like that, in the process creating one of the most heartwrenching romance movies you’ll ever watch. Less cynical than it is hopelessly romantic (emphasizing the hopelessness over the romance), the film is considered one of the greatest LGBT+ movies of all time, influencing countless others who succeeded it.

Hong Kong acting legends Tony Leung and the late great Leslie Cheung play tragic lovers Lai Yiu-Fai and Ho Po-Wing on a trip to Argentina in the hopes it’ll save their decaying relationship. When they get lost and run out of money, ending up stuck in the foreign country and forced to get jobs to earn enough to go back home, their romance is put to the limit, sometimes reaching extremes that are hard to come back from. Wong, who is the recognized master of putting longing and loneliness into film, creates an emotional roller coaster of a romance movie that tests the limits of love in the most grounded intimate way possible.

Le Bonheur (1965)

I read Le Bonheur more like a dark comedy than anything else, almost like director Agnès Varda is mocking, even if not at all explicitly, men’s conception of an ideal life with a dream, submissive wife. The title literally means “Happiness” in English, which is a faithful description of the tone of the film up until a tragedy strikes in the final act, if only for a brief second before the image of the idyllic marriage is restored.

In it, Jean-Claude Drouot plays husband and father François, Claire Drouot plays his wife and the mother of his children Thérèse, and Marie-France Boyer plays his mistress Émilie Savignac. Visually, stylistically, and tonally, the movie is pastel-colored, serene, and radiant. Both women perfectly comply with François’s expectations and he’s the happiest man alive to have both a loving family and a fulfilling sexual affair. Explaining what it is that makes Le Bonheur such a strikingly cynical takedown of heterosexual marriage would ruin all the fun of watching it, so we invite you to go into this movie as blind as possible and draw your own conclusions. Varda refrains from giving anyone any obvious answers, but the legendary filmmaker’s tongue-in-cheek sarcasm can still be found hidden under the picturesque countryside views and beautifully harmonious mise-en-scène of her third feature film.

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