Love may not be time’s fool, but as these transient couples show, it is certainly the victim of circumstance. Almost like clockwork, new romantic dramas and comedies release every year. Few among them have the courage to turn their gaze towards a love affair that doesn’t have a happy ending.
As everyone knows, doomed romances are as certain as the rise and fall of the sun. Strangely enough, so many films resist this harsh reality. For when they do, the impact is deep and memorable, enough to possibly change our perspective on these matters of the heart.
Alvy & Annie – Annie Hall
Nostalgia for New York in the 1970s recalls the city as one of the romance capitals of the world. No pair captures that period of hopeful yet fleeting love like Alvy & Annie.
Both are in periods of transition, Alvy coming out of a previous relationship and becoming a rising comedy star, and Annie who has recently moved to the Big Apple and is finding her footing amongst the hustle and bustle. These situations that join them last only as long as a New York minute. They both need each other, for a time, but as their lives come into clearer focus, their love, unfortunately, fades away.
Blaine & Isla – Casablanca
As time goes by, former loves may reenter the picture, but in the case of Blaine and Isla, life has become more complicated. Conflicted between wishing to help Isla’s new husband escape from the Nazis or to fall back into Isla’s arms, Blaine curses their bittersweet turn of fate, “Of all the gin joints in all the world, why did she have to walk into mine?”
In their heart of hearts, they know their love belongs to their forgone days of Paris, before the war corrupted and complicated the world.
Bob & Charlotte – Lost In Translation
Bob & Charlotte are a case of the right place at the right time. They are both married and have a difference in age the size of a generation gap, but the estrangement they feel in their personal relationships, mirrored by their isolation from the culture shock of Tokyo, creates a necessity for connection that draws them together.
Melancholic wanderlust doesn’t last forever. Life circumstances irresistibly rip Bob & Charlotte apart, but there is a sense that the insight both gain from each other puts them in a better position at the end of the film than when it began.
Celine & Jesse – Before Sunrise
Two lone travelers, a French woman and an American man, unexpectedly meet and strike a connection on a train across Europe. About to depart the train to wander the streets of Vienna alone, Jesse implores Celine to come with him, that their time cannot be over yet.
Against some hesitation, her youthful adventurousness prevails and she agrees. They meander through the narrow Venetian streets and stargaze along the Danube, falling helplessly in love, knowing it will only last a night.
Cindy & Dean – Blue Valentine
What makes this romance clutch the heart is that we know it’s over before it begins. The non-linear narrative of the film transports the audience back and forth between the moment when Cindy & Dean first get married to when their relationship is in free-fall.
Flashbacks to a better time actually become bitter, as the audience knows no matter how much they may love each other, they are doomed to drift apart. Each scene has the somber tone of a last goodbye. While it may be hard to watch, there is something beautiful about seeing love, for no precise or exact reason, fall apart.
Elio & Oliver – Call Me By Your Name
Another pair of generational lovers, except this time they are set behind the languorous glow of a rural Italian village. The son of a scholar hires an expatriate for the summer, sharing quarters at the family home.
What unfolds in the subsequent months are a series of small discoveries, on bike rides, at cafes, that reveal to both young men their affection for one another.
Neo & Trinity – The Matrix Trilogy
In each installment of the franchise, the love of these fated lovers entered into peril. One would be naive not to see the writing on the wall. There is a supernatural action film element to their relationship that gives it an edge. Trinity’s confession of her love for Neo resurrects him from the dead. She also points more guns in people’s’ faces than any other character, in the name of love.
To his credit, Neo flies to her rescue so fast he leaves an entire borough of New York in shambles. But the rough reality they both have to accept is that they are fighting for a cause greater than their combined forces, knowing they can only win if they give themselves to it rather than to each other.
Romeo & Juliet – Romeo + Juliet
The paragon of doomed lovers, Romeo + Juliet captures the romantic fatalism of William Shakespeare’s original play.
Their story is universal. Against the wishes of their families and all other odds, the two rebelliously decide they cannot live without each other. While this ethic brings them together, it is also what leads to their premature ending.
Rose & Jack – Titanic
From the beginning, everyone knows the fate of the ship where Rose & Jack’s fated relationship takes form, so there was no surprise that they don’t stay together in the end. This dramatic irony does not keep the audience from binding themselves to the story of an unlikely pairing, one from the impoverished working class and the other from the bourgeois aristocracy.
Their fight for survival is also one of sacrifice, each putting themselves in peril for the safety of the other. Add the Celine Dion soundtrack and the tears inevitably flow.
Summer & Tom – 500 Days Of Summer
The structure of this film is unique for counting down the days of the couples’ doomed romance like a time bomb. Summer wanders into Tom’s life unexpectedly, as a new hire at their greeting card company. He develops an infatuation with her that seemingly has no limit. When they enter into a relationship, the trailblazing and independent Summer proves to be more than Tom’s heart can endure. He becomes jealous and possessive, so Summer leaves him, though the two cross paths shortly thereafter.
Unable to pull away from one another, or so Tom thinks, he has big expectations at a party Summer invites him to, only to discover she is engaged. Convinced that true love is an illusion, lasting only as long as a summer’s day, Tom sinks into a depression. A last individual encounter with Summer inspires him to rediscover himself, and of course, his belief in love.
