The current decade—though very soon to come to an end—has been characterized by a certain type of romance film. In some ways very contemporary, but in others was entirely unconventional. Not merely films that struggle with sociopolitical factors. Not merely films that portray two characters who don’t realize how good they are for each other, or films that portray two characters who can’t stop being unfaithful. Such frameworks for a story are outmoded and not particularly interesting to most viewers today. In their stead, we are forced to ask, what is love? What is the point of love? Is it to be eternal? Is the only “true” love everlasting, as indicated by the Natalie Cole song at the end of Nancy Meyers’s The Parent Trap?
In the modern era, we can appreciate characters who struggle with the day-to-day drudgery of a lasting relationship of love and the ebbing and flowing of two people who have built a life together. We must ask ourselves, what does it mean for two characters to be “perfect” for each other? Do similar people draw one another, or do opposites attract, as they say? Can a person form a relationship with someone… not human? Can you love someone who doesn’t and could never love you back in the way you love them? These are the questions posed by the best romance films of the decade.
Check out our slideshow below! Do you agree with our list? Be sure to let us know your opinion in the comments!
romance of 2010s
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5. 'Before Midnight' (2013)
Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, of course, builds off of the two films that precede it, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. But it is also quite different. Now nearly a decade into their relationship together, Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) have hit a rough patch as any couple can. On a vacation in Greece, they look to rekindle what they have lost in the years since they met the second time and began this relationship.
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4. 'Paterson' (2016)
With Paterson, Jim Jarmusch takes the banal and makes it beautiful. The sleepy titular town houses its titular character (played by Adam Driver), part-time bus driver, part-time poet and his artist wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani). Together they endure no particularly grand hardships but the grandest of hardships: living the married life of part-independence and part-dependence.
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3. 'Her' (2013)
Spike Jonze’s Her is a beautiful film that begs the question of whether love can be one-sided. In a not-too-distant future, recent divorcee Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) finds an unconventional aid to his loneliness. He purchases and befriends an A.I. named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and begins to fall in love with her.
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2. 'Carol' (2015)
With Carol, Todd Haynes makes a gorgeous, glowy love story about two women who fall for one another in a time when such relationships were taboo and to be kept secret. Cate Blanchett plays the titular character, a well-to-do mother who falls for a toy store cashier and hopeful photographer, Therese (Rooney Mara). It is a moving romance as well as an elegant period piece.
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1. 'Phantom Thread' (2017)
Phantom Threadis an idiosyncratic, unexpected love story from Paul Thomas Anderson that openly intones about the emotional trauma left by a parent and how it manifests in further relationships. In perhaps his final performance, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a women's fashion designer who becomes taken with a waitress, Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps) in midcentury London.
