Still from Stellar (2022)
Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to curl up on the couch with a good movie. Too often, however, the typical selections rely on familiar cinematic tropes: meet-cutes, grand gestures, and neatly resolved happy endings. We all know that love is far more varied and complex than the standard romantic formula suggests.
With that in mind, we asked our resident film experts—faculty, staff, and graduate students across our Film Production and Cinema and Media Studies programs—to recommend films that approach love from unexpected and unconventional perspectives. Their selections span LGBTQ+ narratives, international contexts, and stories that celebrate love as awkward, fleeting, cross-cultural, and deeply human.
Whether you’re marking the day with a partner, friends, a furry companion, or on your own, these films offer an opportunity to consider romance, with all its complications, through a broader cinematic lens.
Desert Hearts (1985)
Desert Hearts (Jean Baudrillard describes the desert as a place where “the air is so pure that the influence of the stars descends direct from the constellations.” The stars align for two women in this sultry 1950’s period piece often referenced to as the lesbian Brokeback Mountain.
—Emma Gibb, Graduate Student, M.A. Cinema and Media Studies
Birth (2004)
Jonathan Glazer’s Birth is about Nicole Kidman falling in love with a ten-year-old boy who convinces her that he is the reincarnation of her dead husband. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen about how love works: namely, that love—like belief—is straight-up insane. Love and belief don’t cycle endlessly around the object the way desire does. The whole point of desire is not getting what we want and just holding on to the desire itself, which is why unrequited crushes are so pleasurable. Love and belief are much more destructive in that respect: they both aim directly at the object and just go for it.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is awesome not just because it’s about a breakup, but because it literally FEELS like a breakup. It has the structure of a breakup. Someone dumps you and you spin these elaborate fantasies that exculpate you of blame, where you save the person who dumped you from some terrible peril, whatever—all to cover up the horrible, mundane reality that something that was once intense and all-consuming is suddenly gone and now you want your ex to die. Happy Valentine’s Day!
—Dr. Christine Evans, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Cinema Studies | Cinema and Media Studies
Two for the Road (1967)
Two for the Road is an unusual mishmash of screwball comedy, heartfelt romantic drama, and road trip movie. With its unconventional non-linear storytelling structure that evokes some of the stylings of the French New Wave, it explores the ups and downs of a relationship from the burning passions of the early stages to a marriage fraying apart by resentment and infidelity, framed as a long drive through the French countryside. With strong chemistry between Hepburn and Finney and a script that manages to be both entertaining and honest, this is one “road” trip worth going on.
—Dmitri Lennikov, Film Collections Coordinator
Stellar (2022)
Subverting the meet-cute, this story follows two Indigenous characters meeting in a small Northern Ontario bar as a meteorite reshapes the world outside. Across their bodies and spirits, the star-crossed couple transcends the traumas of one world and finds a path to a new one. A quirky and hopeful movie directed by Darlene Naponse that I recently screened in my CINE 200 class!
—Dr. William Brown, Associate Professor, Cinema Studies | Cinema and Media Studies
Your Sister’s Sister (2011)
Your Sister’s Sister is a bittersweet, intimate, funny romcom about how heartbreak can lead to healing, and where family complications intersect with passions for love. Set in the San Juan Islands (WA), just South of Vancouver, it is Emily Blunt’s breakout role and Lynn Shelton’s best film (before she passed away too early).
—Dr. Ernest Mathijs, Professor, Cinema Studies | Cinema and Media Studies
Obvious Child (2014)
The film follows Donna, a single comedian navigating New York’s stand-up scene, whose one-night stand with a stranger changes both of their lives. The film is set in February, right around Valentine’s Day, and takes on a serious subject, finding levity and light in the face of difficult decisions. Jenny Slate is deeply funny and relatable in this sweet rom com that will have you laughing and crying in the same breath.
The Handmaiden (2016)
Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, this South Korean erotic historical psychological thriller is as visually striking as it is suspenseful. The film explores love, betrayal, and power through a distinctive and subversive lens.
—Mia Faircloth, Academic Administrator/Advisor
Whisper of the Heart (1995)
Whisper of the Heart (1995)A beautifully grounded Studio Ghibli story that reminds us that while love is worth fighting for, it shouldn’t require you to sacrifice your identity. Instead, it shows how a healthy partnership can fuel you to follow your own dreams and find your own voice. It’s such a refreshing, sincere take on young romance. Seiji reads through a mountain of library books just so his name will appear on the checkout cards before Shizuku’s, yet he is so respectful of her space that he never once disturbs her while she’s reading. 😭 #goals
—Carlett Decker, Graduate Student, MFA Film Production and Creative Writing
An Angel at my Table (1990)
Director Jane Campion adapts the harrowing autobiography of Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most distinguished author. It could always be worse, and worse, it could always be better; to have is to lose.
— Aadi Bhandari, Graduate Student, MA Cinema and Media Studies
C’etait un rendez vous (1976)
Putting this on a list of romantic movies slightly spoils the ending, but you hurtle toward that kiss anyway; Lelouche doesn’t tarry. This short brilliantly marries two very different types of heart-pounding.
—Jacob Pascoe, Graduate Student, MA Cinema and Media Studies
The Scent of Green Papaya (1993)
Set in 1950s Saigon, this visually luminous film traces the coming-of-age of Mùi, a young servant who grows into adulthood within the intimate spaces of two households. A meditation on time, desire, and domestic life, it offers a restrained and deeply sensory portrait of intimacy.
—Kirsty Johnston, Professor, Theatre Studies & Department Head
Moonlight (2016)
An intimate coming-of-age drama that follows a young Black man as he navigates sexuality, masculinity, and desire while growing up in Miami. Heartbreaking and quietly devastating in its portrayal of love and self-discovery— bring Kleenex!
Montreal, My Beautiful (2025)
An intimate queer drama about choosing yourself and discovering love later in life. Set in Mandarin and French, it’s currently screening at the VIFF Centre.
—Linda Pitt, Communications Specialist
