Romance

  • Jin-ho Hur – Bomnaleun ganda AKA One Fine Spring Day [+commentary] (2001)

    2001-2010DramaJin-ho HurRomanceSouth Korea

    Synopsis:
    Sound engineer Sang-woo meets local DJ Eun-soo on a recording trip in the quest for nature’s voice. They succeed in capturing various sensual sounds as well as each other’s tenderness. Their love flourishes as spring comes along, but Sang-woo’s ever intensifying passion often reminds Eun-soo of her tragic past. She knows only too well how passion can vanish like a sound, and how love always surrenders to its end.Read More »

  • Nina Companéez – Faustine et le bel été aka Faustine and the Beautiful Summer (1972)

    1971-1980DramaFranceNina CompanéezRomance

    “Faustine (Muriel Catala) suffers the wounds of first love in this gentle French film. During a summer when she is staying with her grandmother, she comes to know the nearby neighbors. Two brothers live in the large house. One is divorced and one has recently remarried, both of them live there with their teenaged and adult children. Though the boys of the household are drawn to Faustine, she grows ever more smitten with the divorced older man. During one visit she has to hide in his room to avoid the unwelcome attentions of his sons. As the summer draws to a close she has her first amorous kiss. “
    by Clarke FountainRead More »

  • H.C. Potter – You Gotta Stay Happy (1948)

    1941-1950ComedyH.C. PotterRomanceScrewball ComedyUSA

    In this romantic comedy, a wealthy heiress marries hastily and realizes her mistake on her honeymoon in New York. Though it is her wedding night, she decides not to consummate the union and so ends up hiding in the room of a fellow whose airplane cargo company is facing financial ruin. He assumes that the frightened girl is poor and homeless and so takes her in. She then overdoses on sleeping pills and cannot wake up. The fellow is forced to take her back to California. The flight back is tumultuous as she, a fugitive criminal, two enamored newlyweds, a cigar smoking chimp, a corpse, and a shipment of lobsters are aboard the plane. Mayhem really ensues when the plane crashes in a farmer’s field. By this time, the woman and the fellow have fallen in love.Read More »

  • Orvo Saarikivi – Hätävara AKA The Stopgap (1939)

    1931-1940ComedyFinlandOrvo SaarikiviRomance

    Synopsis
    Vappu Kankare – a fiery redhead and priest’s daughter – first competes with, irritates and then admires the ambitious co-habitant, Jalmar “Jali” Kinnu. After the studies, Vappu and Jali get married, but the marriage is disappointing. Not one to be easily put in her place, Vappu takes action.Read More »

  • Joshua Logan – Picnic (1956)

    1951-1960DramaJoshua LoganRomanceUSA

    Synopsis:
    One of the biggest box-office attractions of the 1950s, Picnic was adapted by Daniel Taradash from the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Inge play. William Holden plays Hal Carter, a handsome drifter who ambles into a small Kansas town during the Labor Day celebration to look up old college chum Alan (Cliff Robertson, in his film debut). Hoping to hit up Alan for a job–or a handout–Hal ends up stealing his buddy’s fiancee Madge Owens (Kim Novak). Hal also has a catnip effect on spinster schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (Rosalind Russell), so much so that Rosemary makes a fool of herself in front of the whole town, nearly driving away her longtime beau Howard Bevans (Arthur O’Connell).Read More »

  • Lone Scherfig – Italiensk For Begyndere aka Italian for Beginners (2000)

    1991-2000DenmarkDogma FilmsDramaLone ScherfigRomance

    In a city suburb, a young minister arrives to take up duties at a local church. He is persuaded by his assistant to join an Italian night school class, and he soon becomes the centre of a group of people to whom fate has dealt quite serious blows.Read More »

  • Dan Sallitt – Honeymoon (1998)

    1991-2000Dan SallittDramaRomanceUSA

    A couple in their thirties marry after years of friendship, and go on their honeymoon without having had a physical relationship. Over the course of their honeymoon they encounter sexual difficulties and conflict owed to their heightened self-consciousness and overbearing expectations for how things should be. Feeling that the marriage is hanging by a thread, the couple works desperately towards a solution.Read More »

  • Agnieszka Holland – Washington Square (1997)

    1991-2000Agnieszka HollandDramaRomanceUSA

    This period piece by Polish director Agnieszka Holland is one of her most successful Hollywood ventures. It’s the second film adaptation of the Henry James novel, but strikes a very different, more feminist and acutely observed, note than William Wyler’s The Heiress, its gaudy 1949 predecessor.

    Catherine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is the plain and socially awkward daughter of wealthy Dr Austin Sloper (Albert Finney). Sloper came into his fortune by marrying a rich woman whose death giving birth to Catherine has permanently embittered him against her.Read More »

  • Rouben Mamoulian & Lowell Sherman – Becky Sharp (1935)

    1931-1940DramaLowell ShermanRomanceRouben MamoulianUSA

    Synopsis:
    Set against the background of the Battle of Waterloo, Becky Sharp is the story of Vanity Fair by Thackeray. Becky and Amelia are girls at school together, but Becky is from a “show biz” family, or in other words, very low class. Becky manages to insinuate herself in Amelia’s family and gets to know all their friends. From this possibly auspicious- beginning, she manages to ruin her own life, becoming sick, broke, and lonely, and also ruins the lives of many other “loved ones”. In the movie we get to see the class distinctions in England at the time, and get a sense of what it was like for the English military at the time of the Napoleonic wars.Read More »

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