5 of the best romantic movies you can see this weekend

2024-12-28 10:08:00, Lifestyle CNA

The Notebook (2004)

In the two decades since The Notebook was released, Ryan Gosling has cultivated his image as a chiseled heartthrob to such a degree that he seemed the perfect choice to play a Ken doll in the Barbie movie.

But by the time director Nick Cassavetes cast him for the role of Noah Calhoun, he saw the actor differently: as a clingy and reckless person who chases his dream girl (Rachel McAdams' Alea) on a Ferris wheel very persistently. .

No matter what Allie does, he continues to love her in the best possible version Hollywood can do for a Nicholas Sparks novel.

The secret formula here comes in Noah and Allie catching up half a century later, as played by screen legends James Garner and Gena Rowlands, along with emotional reason as we relive all of their most romantic memories.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

It's a queer love story set entirely "in the closet." However, dramatizing the inner lives of two cowboys who find a romantic home in the early 60s, Ang Lee's surprising adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story undermined any expectations of contemporary audiences.

Showing us two men who discover a love they themselves think is forbidden, the film dramatizes how prejudice can permeate the fabric of people's lives; it also shows that the myth of the American "macho man" is just that: a myth.

At the same time, our desire for Ennis and Jack to make a life for themselves becomes overwhelming to the point of anger. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger's performances are indelible and, in Ledger's case, wonderful, as he turns the strangled and barely articulate Ennis into a vivid metaphor for a love that can never be told her name.

Titanic (1997)

The greatest romantic film of its time and also the most sublime, James Cameron's ocean disaster epic is the rare Hollywood film that achieves a larger-than-life quality.

However, its secret weapon as a love story is the often unacknowledged versatility of its storytelling. Jack and Rose, lovers from opposite sides of the class divide, are played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet who have great chemistry.

The implication is that their union could take as long as the Titanic's voyage—if it weren't for that fatal iceberg. In Titanic, it is disaster itself that elevates love into something eternal.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Set in 1963 but shot in the '80s, this sexy summer camp romance defied its critics to become a classic.

Jennifer Grey's character's nickname, "Baby," went a long way to illustrate what's really going on there: the teenage daughter of conservative Jewish parents is being forever infantilized by her own people, until she meets a slightly older, but definitely older, dance teacher. sober (Patrick Swayze) who tells her the time of her life.

"Corrupted" by rock 'n' roll, Baby grows up quickly, overcoming her initial shyness from "I was holding a watermelon" to training with her seductive instructor, who practices a new and wild style of contact close between them. Like "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Grease" before it, the film plays with the fantasy of an out-of-bounds tug-of-war between Baby and the bad guy.

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Clint Eastwood used his sensitive side to deliver one of his most indelible characters as Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer on assignment in Iowa who stops by a farmhouse to ask for directions.

He is greeted by Francesca, a lonely war bride, who offers to show him around (an Italian-accented Meryl Streep who says as much with her silent gestures as with the way she absentmindedly touches herself in the places he wants to be petted).

Not surprisingly, this unhappy housewife develops feelings for this stranger. More poignant is Kincaid's admission that he has also fallen in love with Francesca, but knows she has no intention of leaving her family.

However, that doesn't stop him from trying. "This kind of security only comes once in a lifetime," he tells her. The sight of Kincaid looking despondent in the rain, rain likely masking tears, is so radically anti-Eastwood, you have to believe it.