Desert HeartsMovies like Desert Hearts
- Key Features:
- Lesbian romance, Coming-of-age, Self-discovery, Repression, Sexual awakening, 1950s setting, Divorce, Social stigma, Character study, Independent film
- Tone:
- earnest, restrained
- Target Audience:
- LGBTQ+ viewers, Romance enthusiasts, Independent film lovers, Viewers interested in historical dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- Repression → Attraction → Liberation
Desert Hearts

While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.
Desert Hearts
Candy and Lonnie Earl are just crazy about each other. The problem: she's married to Roy and he's married to Darlene. So far it's been a secret affair. But that's about to change, because this foursome is driving cross-country and headed for some big surprises.

As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.

After a rough divorce, Frances, a 35-year-old professor and writer from San Francisco takes a tour of Tuscany at the urgings of her friends. On a whim she buys Bramasole, a run down villa in the Tuscan countryside and begins to piece her life together starting with the villa and finds that life sometimes has unexpected ways of giving her everything she wanted.

In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.

Caroline, a young waitress who seems to have bad taste in men, is on her way home one night when thugs attempt to rape her. Adam, the mysterious busboy who works at the same diner, helps fight off the assailants, and she begins a relationship with him -- but not all their fellow Minnesotans are happy for them. Meanwhile, the couple face their own difficulties when Caroline finds about Adam's past, including his unique health condition.

Amid the dust storms and economic depression of Dust Bowl Era Oklahoma, Eugene Evans finds his family farm on the brink of foreclosure. Discovering fugitive bank robber Allison Wells hiding in his small town, he is torn between claiming the bounty on her head and his growing attraction to the seductive criminal.

Kennedy Blaine, a Californian girl, inherits a ranch in the small town of Valentine in Nebraska. Before she sells the property, she decides to spend the summer in her house and learn more about her family.

Adrienne is trying to decide whether to stay in her unhappy marriage or not, and her life changes when Paul, a doctor who is travelling to reconcile with his estranged son, checks into an inn where she is staying.

On honeymoon on the island of Lesbos, a woman falls for the daughter of a Russian archaeologist.

While filing for a divorce, beautiful ex-stripper Roslyn Taber ends up meeting aging cowboy-turned-gambler Gay Langland and former World War II aviator Guido Racanelli. The two men instantly become infatuated with Roslyn and, on a whim, the three decide to move into Guido's half-finished desert home together. When grizzled ex-rodeo rider Perce Howland arrives, the unlikely foursome strike up a business capturing wild horses.

An adventurous love story between two young women of different social and economic backgrounds who find themselves going through all the typical struggles of a new romance.

Emma, a divorced single mother seeking to start her life over, moves to a small town in Arizona. She befriends Murphy, the older local pharmacist, but things turn complicated when her ex-husband shows up.

An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.

Claudia and Flavio were once passionately in love, but all of that is over. Now, in their fifties, they must venture anew into the world of love and dating once more but for Claudia confronting the end and accepting a new beginning isn’t so easy. Claudia is unwilling to let go and forget the life she’s built with Flavio, while Flavio, eager to move on, soon finds himself in a relationship with a much younger woman. Claudia soon reconnects with Nina, a student from her days as a professor.

Cowboys Beauregard Decker and Virgil Blessing attend a rodeo in Phoenix, where Decker falls in love with beautiful cafe singer Cherie. He wants to take Cherie back to his native Montana and marry her, but she dreams of traveling to Hollywood and becoming famous. When she resists his advances, Decker forces Cherie onto the bus back to Montana with him, but, when the bus makes an unscheduled stop due to bad weather, the tables are turned.

14-year-old Elias increasingly feels like an outsider in his village. When he meets his new neighbour of the same age, Alexander, Elias is confronted with his burgeoning sexuality.

A former child actress attends college in search of independence and ends up becoming romantically involved with a female professor. Their relationship thrives until an opportunity to return to acting forces her to make life-altering decisions.

A retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of 1850.

Frustrated by the lack of intimacy in her relationship, a young schoolteacher goes through a series of intimidating and often violent sexual partners.

Agnese and Stefano are profoundly different. She is only seventeen, lives with her mother – a harsh and devoted woman – is a regular church-goer and is about to take a vow of chastity to last until marriage. He is twenty-five, has a violent temper and a difficult past behind. He works as a warden in a car park that borders a Roma camp. Their unexpected meeting engenders a true sentiment, made of little stolen moments and mutual help.

In 1950s New York, a department-store clerk who dreams of a better life falls for an older, married woman.

Julie, a girl from the valley, meets Randy, a punk from the city. They are from different worlds and find love. Somehow they need to stay together in spite of her trendy, shallow friends.

Two drag performers and a transgender woman travel across the desert to perform their unique style of cabaret.

A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.

Passions reignite and hidden secrets revealed when a graphic designer in Los Angeles reconnects with an ex-lover he hasn’t seen or heard from in 15 years. Over the course of a weekend at a vacation house in the desert, they must determine whether or not they have a future together.

In the 1950s, a seemingly sensible newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law undertake parallel journeys of risk, romance, and self-discovery.

Not long after moving into her own place, Maggie finds herself with two unsolicited roommates: her recently divorced mother, Lila, and her young brother. The timing is especially bad, considering Maggie has fallen hard for an attractive woman, Kim, only hours before they move in. What could be a nonissue becomes increasingly complicated -- since Maggie's family is unaware of her sexual orientation, and Maggie is not open to sharing that information.

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

Two young women will stop at nothing for one to gain a $4 million inheritance of two priceless diamonds, while two detectives try to thwart their plans, but find complications abound.

Rei helps the woman she's been in love with for years escape her abusive husband. While on the run, their feelings for each other catch fire.

At a crossroads after her divorce, a schoolteacher ventures toward a fresh start in life — and love — when she signs up for a grueling group hiking trip.

Set in '50s Spain, a young man leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée can get married. He rents a room from a widow, and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.

In a dazzling, dreamlike Las Vegas, longtime couple Hank and Frannie break up on their fifth anniversary and each pursue the fantasy of new love over one neon-soaked night—he with a free-spirited acrobat, she with a seductive musician. But as illusion and reality blur, both must decide whether passion or devotion truly defines the heart.

In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.

A woman during the Second World War opens her heart to an evacuee after initially resolving to be rid of him.

A young girl recounts her girlhood and eventual marriage to a general of the Mexican revolution. by one of the most outstanding writers of the new feminist Mexican literature, it is at once a haunting novel of one woman's life and a powerful account of post-revolutionary Mexico from a female perspective.

In a rural Utah town, David, a father of four, grapples with his separation from wife Nikki as she pursues a new relationship.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

Daniela, raised in the bosom of a strict Evangelical family and recently unmasked as a fornicator by her shocked parents, struggles to find her own path to spiritual harmony.

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

A runaway orphan, young Sonora, persists in a menial job mucking stables in Doc Carver's travelling stunt show. Her great wish is to become a death-defying "diving girl," but Doc refuses her pleas. Undaunted, Sonora's gutsy resolve finally convinces him to give her a break. On the brink of stardom, however, a cruel twist of fate threatens to destroy her dream.

Traditional girl Pie is initially uncomfortable with her tomboyish new roommate. But as time goes on, she finds herself increasingly attracted to her.

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.

Shy, straight-A student Ellie is hired by sweet but inarticulate jock Paul, who needs help wooing the most popular girl in school. But their new and unlikely friendship gets tricky when Ellie discovers she has feelings for the same girl.

Al McCord is hanging out at his favourite restaurant when he meets an attractive young woman (Ellie) who is looking for a ride from the city out into the Mojave Desert, where her mother lives. Little does he know that while Ellie is falling in love with him, he is falling for her mother (Julie), despite the nearby presence of Julie's boyfriend who seems likely to go berzerk at any moment. Even more strange, hilarious events follow and it's up to Al to find some explanation. His life may never again be the same.

A Bedouin village in Northern Israel. When Jalila's husband marries a second woman, Jalila and her daughter's world is shattered, and the women are torn between their commitment to the patriarchal rules and being true to themselves.

Elegant, retired architect Shauna (70) crosses paths with Pierre, a happily married doctor in his 40s, who first made an impression on her in a brief meeting 15 years previously. Both are quite troubled to meet again and begin an affair. While Pierre’s family life is soon turned upside down, Shauna struggles with feelings she thought belonged to the past.

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.

After losing their spouses in a plane crash, an internal affairs cop and a congresswoman find each other's keys in each other's loved ones' possessions and discover that the two were having an affair.

Carlino Vigetti is pushed by his family to court the daughters of the Osti, landowners. But the return of their third daughter, the beautiful Francesca, will shatter the plans ...

A small-town beauty queen and an unlicensed mortician set out across the Texas plains on a journey of self-discovery.

Amid shifting times, two women kept their decades-long love a secret. But coming out later in life comes with its own set of challenges.

Kelly, a hopeless romantic in Montana eager to finish her dissertation, and her father, Hank, a rancher, receive news that he has inherited an estate from a faraway land. When they travel there, they discover that Hank has not only inherited the estate, but the title that goes along with it – KING!

Local rebellious teenager Clotaire falls for his schoolmate Jackie, but gang violence leads him to a darker destructive path. After years apart, the star-crossed lovers discover that every path they've taken leads them back together.

A Serbian ballroom dancer experiences an unexpected and intense 24-hour romance with a friend's older brother.

Diana Watts, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, is in the midst of an affair with one of her students, Eric Tull. As the reality of their situation forces itself upon them, Diana puts the relationship on hold. It’s only a matter of time before she gives in again to her desire; this time even more recklessly than before.

A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.

Rose Morgan, who still lives with her mother, is a professor of Romantic Literature who desperately longs for passion in her life. Gregory Larkin, a mathematics professor, has been burned by passionate relationships and longs for a sexless union based on friendship and respect.

A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.

A photographer and an unemployed woman embark on a chaotic trip to the California desert for a photo shoot, filled with passionate encounters and frequent fights. Their seemingly empty relationship takes a dark turn when a brutal incident abruptly ends their journey.

Banks is a hit man, the best, usually working for Latin American drug cartels. He picks up solitary women, uses them briefly for a job, then kills them. He's in the Southwest, headed toward Mexico, when he picks up Bennie, a woman leaving an abusive marriage, going to Paradise, Arizona. The film follows three tracks: Banks's slow recruitment of Bennie, the set-up for the hit at a swank resort in Mexico, and the FBI's close pursuit of Banks, whom they want alive in hopes he'll rat out his bosses. Bennie may not be who she seems, and there may be a chink in Banks's tough-guy armor. Guns, money, and a chance at Paradise.

Bright days ahead? Caroline has retired, at last. A new life lies before her: time to take care of her children, her husband, and, most of all, herself. However, she soon comes to realize that this new freedom is synonymous with boredom and idleness. Especially when she receives a membership to her neighborhood’s senior club as a birthday present… Reluctant at first, she nevertheless decides to take the plunge. Oddly enough, she meets great people there, starting with the young computer science teacher, who is far from insensitive to her charms. Caroline gradually takes control of her life again and lives a second youth: taking a new lover, living new experiences, breaking the rules, not doing what’s expected of her… Who said that retirement was the beginning of the end and not a new beginning?

Fed up with her deadbeat grown kids and marginal urban existence, Juanita takes a Greyhound bus to Paper Moon, Montana - where she reinvents herself and finds her mojo.

Anthropology student Daria, who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert, and dropout Mark, who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot, accidentally encounter each other in Death Valley and soon begin an unrestrained romance.

While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

A coming-of-age movie that tells a story unfolding in every high school around the country -- a story of kids hiding their true identities in plain sight, even as they feverishly pursue their hearts' desires.

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

A spoiled rich woman and a brutish Communist deckhand become stranded alone on a desert island after venturing away from their cruise.

A young woman returns home and must confront her ex-boyfriend when an unexpected tragedy occurs.

Wondering what has happened to herself, now feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley Valentine finds herself regularly talking to the wall while preparing her husband's chips and egg. When her best friend wins a trip-for-two to Greece Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.

Two women -- a restaurateur and an architect -- have a seemingly idyllic romantic relationship, until the latter encounters a man she had a fling with.

When a young coffee shop owner is threatened with repossession she must take a chance with life and love as she fights to save her business.

A gay couple living in San Francisco takes in two strangers traveling from Italy to start a new life in America, discovering each other and forming the most unlikely of relationships along the way.

Ivana Cornejo is just getting used to being single again after her divorce three years ago. After an exasperating call from her ex-husband, she throws her cell phone away. Fortunately, the man who finds it calls her to return it, and to her amusement they have an instant rapport. The man on the other end of the phone is León Godoy, a renowned architect with a charming voice and a charismatic personality. They schedule a date so that he can return the cell phone. When León arrives, Ivana is surprised: he is everything she had imagined, except for one unexpected and startling detail... he’s only 4'5" tall.

In the 1800s frontier, Missie Davis is a bright and beautiful schoolteacher whose love for the prairie is matched only by her passion for books. When Missie encounters Grant, a handsome New England railroad executive, she feels as though she's met a hero from one of her novels.

The world of a young housewife is turned upside down when she has an affair with a free-spirited blouse salesman.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

Young lovers Sailor and Lula hit the road to start a new life together away from the wrath of Lula’s deranged, disapproving mother, who has hired a team of hitmen to cut the lovers’ surreal honeymoon short.

In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.

After returning to Los Angeles from a group therapy session, documentary filmmaker Bob Sanders and his wife, Carol, find themselves becoming vigilante couples counselors, offering unsolicited advice to their best friends, Ted and Alice Henderson. Not wanting to be rude, the Hendersons play along, but some latent sexual tension among the four soon comes bubbling to the surface, and long-buried desires don't stay buried for long.

Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end disastrously or provide a catalyst of hope.

Anita, a young woman with a troubled childhood and a hunger for love, finds a soul mate in Erik, a kindly college student.

A small town waitress stuck in a lousy marriage finds love when an exciting out-of-towner enters her life.

When a hopelessly romantic high school senior falls for a mysterious new classmate, it sets them both on an unexpected journey that teaches them about love, loss, and most importantly themselves.

After their caravan is attacked and their respective families butchered by Arab marauders, teenagers David and Sarah flee across the desert. But the desert is filled with danger from the elements, animals and the unwholesome appetite of the Jackal, a sheik who wants Sarah for himself. However, the desert also holds temptation and love. David and Sarah hide out in an oasis and build a life for themselves, discovering each other in new ways.

A World War II prisoner returns home to his childhood sweetheart. However, back home, he discovers that he has to compete to win her love.

Under small-town scrutiny, a withdrawn farmer’s daughter forges an intimate friendship with a worldly but reckless new girl in 1960s Oklahoma.

The wife of a pastor who preaches against homosexuality embarks on an affair with a female writer.

Nina is a young, carefree actress who arrives in Paris searching for her big break. There, she finds drama both on- and offstage as she becomes involved with three men: a mild-mannered real-estate agent who offers her stability, a bad-boy actor who lives dangerously on the edge, and an intense theater director who casts her in a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” As opening night approaches, the emotional extremes of Nina’s love life fuel her art.

Fired from her job as a reality TV host, Natalie returns home for Valentine's Day, only to find herself running the town festival's auction with her ex-fiancé thanks to two scheming mothers.

On a trip to the beach, a teenage girl named Tobe meets a charismatic stranger named Harlan, who dresses like a cowboy and claims to be a former ranch hand. The pair feel an instant attraction and begin a relationship, but her father, a lawman, is suspicious of her lover.

Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...

Jean is young, gay, and promiscuous. Only after he meets one or two women, including Laura, does he come to realize his bisexuality. Jean has to overcome a personal crisis and a tough choice between Laura and his male lover Samy.

A young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.

Ivy League Freshman, Aaron Milton (17) gets a different kind of education when he falls for Linda (34) a vivacious former wild-child who has returned to college to straighten out her life. The curriculum gets more challenging when Aaron meets Linda's sarcastic 14 year-old daughter, Beth - who quickly develops a crush on him. The math doesn't work in either direction but the dysfunctional triangle becomes a learning experience for all involved.

After moving to Palm Springs, a young married couple puts their love to the test when they discover that their neighbors are swingers.

