I highly consider myself to be a hopeless romantic, and none the less I watch way too many movies about love. Some of my favorites romance movies have to be the ones that don’t have a happy ending, but that have more realistic endings to them. So, I have decided to give you a list of my top five favorite romantically realistic films.
- (500) Days of Summer
first Movie I want to recommend to you hopeless romantics out there is (500) Days of summer, which is one of my all-time favorite movies directed by Marc Webb. (500) Days of summer is a romantic comedy that revolves around the main character Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Tom is a hopeless romantic who writes greeting cards for a living and has his whole world turned around when he meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Summer is Tom’s perfect manic pixie girl, but the only problem is that she doesn’t believe in love, however, Tom being Tom he still falls for her and she of course breaks his heart. So, the film is based around Tom’s 500 days of falling for and getting over Summer. The realistic aspect of this movie is simply that sometimes a person is not going to love you back, and honestly the “perfect” person is not always the right one.
- Begin Again
The second film that I highly recommend is begin again, which is not only for romantics but also all the music lovers out there. Begin again was both directed and written by John Carny who also brought us “Once” and “Sing Street”. The movie begins with Greta (Keira Knightly) and her current boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) who just got signed over to a major record label in New York, sadly Dave decides to stir up trouble in their relationship and Gretta decides to go back home away from Dave. The night before Gretta’s flight, Gretta’s best friend convinces her to sing at an open mic where things take a good turn and she is discovered by a troubled record executive Dan (Mark Ruffalo). Dan decides to help Gretta jump start her music career but only under her terms, in this amazing journey of heart break and self-love. This film is full of amazing music and live performances and ending with a powerful moving on experience for Gretta.
- Celeste and Jesse Forever
You cannot get any more real than Celeste and Jesse Forever, Directed by Lee Toland Krieger and co- written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. Starting with a quick but heartfelt history of the couple’s relationship we get a supercut of the beginning to the present time events of Celeste and Jesses relationship which is having obvious issues. Celeste (Rashida Jones) being the more responsible person in the relationship who is also extremely OCD with a need to always be right, and Jesse being the aspiring artist who needs to grow up. We find out not too fast into the begging of the film that Celeste and Jesse are separated but Jesse is still living with Celeste and pretending that everything is okay, which is a huge concern to their friends because of Celeste no longer wanting the relationship (supposedly). Things take a turn for the worst and Jesse finds out he will be having a child with another woman and we continue to follow Celeste in her journey to dating and moving on.
- La La Land
The next film I wanted to talk about is La La land, written and directed by Damien Chazelle. La La land beings with introducing Mia (Emma Stone) who is an aspiring actress trying to make it in the industry who later runs into Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) who is an aspiring jazz pianist. The movie follows the growth and fall of Mia and Sebastian’s relationship due to their choice of careers. This is a story about real love and what it means to let go of someone you love so they can succeed in their life and live their dreams. I fell in love with the ending of this movie, showing what could’ve been and showing what ended up happening for the better.
- Once
Last but not Least Once, which was also written and directed by John Carney and realized in 2007. John Carney is well known for his musically inclined films like Begin again and sing street but this all started with Once. Once is a very low budget indie film about the romantic and musical relationship between a Guy (Glen Hansard) and Girl (Market Irglova), whose names are never revealed in the movie. Glen Hansard’s character is an aspiring singer with a broken heart who is currently working for his father who fixes vacuum cleaners, Glen meets Marketa when he is playing out on the street and later learns the she is a pianist. Glen and Market decide to record an album together, and during this process their relationship begins to escalate but is put off when Glen learns about Marketa’s personal life. This film is filled with amazing music all written by Glen and Marketa, that perfectly embodies the story of the film, that sadly ends the way nobody wants it to.