The idea of romance and its on-screen portrayal tends to change with time. What would be considered chivalrous in the old world could now be deemed as over-dramatic. Every generation that exists figures out its idea of love and its expression, culminating in the word romance. There are traditional romantic films that revolve around stereotypes that have been done to death. There are also a few films that shun these self-imposed stereotypes and explore the story for what it is, rather than what it should be. Here’s a list of romance movie endings that didn’t go as planned.

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8 Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

     Recorded Picture Company

Only Lovers Left Alive is a realistic retelling of a vampire couple set against the backdrop of Tangier. Directed by musician-turned-filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, the film is stylistic, moody, and free-flowing with no real direction in terms of the story. Rather, the film presents itself as a mood piece, gradually unfolding sensually. Rather than being overly gimmicky, Only Lovers Left Alive deals with the theme of vampires from a realistic point of view. Unlike conventional romantic films that generally end on a happy note, Only Lovers Left Alive ends on a melancholic note, with the vampire couple hunting humans, a symbol of them giving up on their values.

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7 Burning (2018)

     Pinehouse Film

Burning is one of the few films that leaves the viewer confused, unsettled, and yearning for more by the end of the film. Directed by the legendary Lee Chang-dong, the film’s genre is hotly debated and contested. Some view it as a murder mystery, while others view it as a commentary on classism. A common thread throughout the film is an eerie borderline obsessive sense of romanticism. What makes Burning stand out from other romantic films is its narrative identity, and its climax. The film is suggestive in nature as to who killed who, but leaves the characters and their intentions fairly open to interpretation. This causes more chaos, which overall makes the film even more disturbing to watch. Burning doesn’t explore romance for the sake of romance; it rather positions it against the cultural climate of social commentary.

6 Worst Person in the World (2021)

     SF Studios (Norway) Memento Distribution (France) TriArt Film (Sweden)

Possibly one of the standout films of last year, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is a case study inside the lives and minds of young adults. The film explores themes such as angst, identity, and affection through the eyes of Julie, a young woman making her transition into adulthood. Trier masterfully highlights the changes in Julie’s personality and outlook on life as she goes from one relationship to the other, reserving the most important realization till the climax of the film. As Julie’s broken up with her recent boyfriend, and turned into a photographer, she spots her ex and his current partner and their kid. The film ends on a bittersweet note, on Julie’s close-up, pondering over what life could’ve been had she not chosen this course. This pause, this reflection, clearly underlines the theme of the film; the most important relationship one has, is with oneself.

5 Paterson (2016)

Paterson is poetry in motion. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, the film stars Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani. Disregarding the norm of romantic films that are larger than life, Paterson is a soft, gentle story about love that’s present in everyday things. The film revolves around the week in the life of a bus driver and his relationship with his wife. Exploring the daily routine of a husband, an employee and a closet poet, Paterson is a love letter to the everyday artists of the world. Towards the end of the film, we see a man hand Paterson a notebook, knowing he’s a poet. Paterson, denies this, but still accepts the notebook, and writes a poem in it. If films like Titanic and The Notebook are overbearing declarations of love, Paterson is a gentler celebration of the sweetness that everyday love can bring.

4 Fallen Angels (1995)

     Kino International

Wong Kar Wai’s Fallen Angels is often remembered for its stylistic, neon-glow lights and whacky soundtracks from Massive Attack and The Flying Pickets. But at its heart, it’s a love story. The story revolves around an assassin whose love with his business partner and a no-good bum, who turns into a mute after eating a can of expired pineapples. In the film, Wong Kar Wai paints a portrait of life in a metro, using his characters as subjects and the fabric of their lives as source material. Fallen Angels is a surreal film that doesn’t place much emphasis on a narrative; rather, it just stays with the characters and observes how they make sense of the boiler room of a metro they’ve been placed in. If films were people, Fallen Angels would be the distraught lover who gets his fingers burnt in love. The film ends with the death of the assassin, orchestrated by the hands of the woman he was in business with, whom he allegedly loved.

3 In The Mood For Love (2000)

     Focus Features

Considered by many to be one of the best romantic films of this generation, In the Mood for Love is the tale of two neighbors who fall in love after discovering that their respective spouses are having an affair. In, In The Mood For Love, Wai avoids his usual stylistic tendency to explore disparate characters crisscrossing each other and rather focuses on the relationship between two characters. The beauty of the film lies in its genius to paint a picture of love and infidelity without ever revealing the respective spouses of the two individuals. This subconsciously, has the two characters double up as their spouses, an homage to “Tête-Bêche”, which is a philatelic term, referring to a pair of postage stamps, one inverted in relation to the other. Towards the end of the film, the couple are posed with a pertinent question, should they become the kind of people, they found their spouses to be, or with a heavy heart, should they just walk away.

2 Vortex (2021)

     Rectangle Productions

Having directed films like Love, Enter The Void, and Climax, Gaspar Noe’s work has a divided fanbase. But no one can deny the filmmaker’s unabashed drive for authenticity. With his previous work majorly touching upon themes such as young love and drugs, Noe shifts direction in his most recent work of art, Vortex. Vortex deals with themes of dementia and old age as it revolves around the life of an old couple, with the mother losing memory. Vortex is eerily close to Gaspar Noe’s heart as his mother suffered from dementia. Originally presented as a love story, the film takes the viewer through themes of various human traits that can plague a relationship. Towards the end of the film, the father dies, and the mother lights herself on fire, unable to deal with the shock of having to live without him.

1 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

     Neon & Hulu

From writer and director Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, is the story of a romance between an aristocratic lady and a painter commissioned to paint her portrait. The film explores the relationship formed between the two women set against the backdrop of 18th century France. Sciamma, delicately deals with complex emotional themes such as love, suppression, and individuality. With beautiful visuals and classic, soundtracks, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, is an immersive experience. Unable to culminate their romance into a relationship, the pair of young lovers depart and go on with their lives. It’s only towards the end, at an opera house that they finally see each other again. As the camera slowly dollies in, we see an explosion of emotions on their faces, ranging from melancholy, to love, against the background sound of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Symphony.