Melinda and MelindaMovies like Melinda and Melinda
- Key Features:
- Divorce, Substance abuse, Romantic relationships, Infidelity, Comedy, Tragedy, Parallel narratives, Character study, Relationship drama, New York City setting, Upper class, Existentialism
- Tone:
- humorous, serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Intellectual viewers, Relationship drama fans, Woody Allen fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Amusement → Empathy
Melinda and Melinda

While dining out with friends, Sy suggests the difficulty of separating comedy from tragedy. To illustrate his point, he tells his guests two parallel stories about Melinda ; both versions have the same basic elements, but one take on her state of affairs leans toward levity, while the other is full of anguish. Each story involves Melinda coping with a recent divorce through substance abuse while beginning a romantic relationship with a close friend's husband.
Melinda and Melinda
When their best friends announce that they're separating, a professor and his wife discover the faults in their own marriage.

Middle-aged and divorced, Wilson finds himself lonely, smug, and obsessed with his past.

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.

The career and personal life of writer Lee are at a standstill, so he divorces his bashful wife, Robin, and dives into a new job as an entertainment journalist. His assignments take him to the swankiest corners of Manhattan, but as he jumps from one lavish party to another and engages in numerous empty romances, he starts to doubt the worth of his work. Meanwhile, top TV producer Tony falls for Robin and introduces her to the world of celebrity.

A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.

Ten years after their divorce, Jane and Jake Adler unite for their son's college graduation and unexpectedly end up sleeping together. But Jake is married, and Jane is embarking on a new romance with her architect. Now, she has to sort out her life—just when she thought she had it all figured out.

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.

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

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

Upon discovering her husband's infidelity, Sandy leaves the suburbs and moves into the city. There, she befriends Aram, a guy whose wife only married him so she could get a green card. Sandy hires Aram to be her nanny, and it isn't long until Aram and Sandy find out they get along wonderfully and start to date. But is their relationship real or is it, in fact, just a rebound for both of them?

Jerry Falk, an aspiring writer in New York, falls in love at first sight with a free-spirited young woman named Amanda. He has heard the phrase that life is like "anything else," but soon he finds that life with the unpredictable Amanda isn't like anything else at all.

After experiencing a traumatic misfortune, Jasmine French, a wealthy woman from New York, moves to San Francisco to live with her foster sister Ginger and the firm purpose of getting a new life, but she will be haunted by anxiety and memories of the past.

A wealthy woman from Manhattan's Upper East Side struggles to deal with her new identity and her sexuality after her husband of 16 years leaves her for a younger woman.

A renowned ophthalmologist is desperate to cut off an adulterous relationship…which ends up in murder; and a frustrated documentary filmmaker woos an attractive television producer while making a film about her insufferably self-centered boss.

Restless and unhappy, two couples get caught up in infidelity and deception. Barry is a sullen businessman married to Mary, a writer who is unsatisfied with their relationship. Mary begins an affair with Jerry, a smug theater professor and husband of her friend, Terri, who is also a writer. Adding to the adulterous mix are Cary, a callous doctor, and Cheri, an art-gallery assistant.

After a suicide attempt, Lane has moved into her country house to recuperate. Her best friend, Stephanie, has come to join her for the summer. Lane's mother, Diane, has recently arrived with her husband Lloyd, Lane's stepfather. Lane is close to two neighbors: Peter, and Howard. Howard is in love with Lane, Lane is in love with Peter, and Peter is in love with Stephanie.

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".

The story of a married American couple who go to the San Sebastian Film Festival. They get caught up in the magic of the festival, the beauty and charm of Spain and the fantasy of movies. She has an affair with a brilliant French movie director, and he falls in love with a beautiful Spanish woman who lives there.

Two young people arrive in New York to spend a weekend, but once they arrive they're met with bad weather and a series of adventures.

A grown man is still caught in the crossfire of his parents' 15 year divorce. He discovers he was unknowingly part of a study on divorced children and is enlisted in a follow-up years later, which wreaks new havoc on his family.

After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.

Kate and Charlie like to have a good time. Their marriage thrives on a shared fondness for music, laughter… and getting smashed. When Kate’s partying spirals into hard-core asocial behavior, compromising her job as an elementary schoolteacher, something’s got to give. But change isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Sobriety means she will have to confront the lies she’s been spinning at work, her troubling relationship with her mother, and the nature of her bond with Charlie.

Will Henry is a newly single graphic novelist balancing being a parent to his young twin daughters and teaching a classroom full of college students, all the while trying to navigate the rich complexities of new love and letting go of the woman who left him.

A comedic drama featuring two couples and two old friends in Mexico City. Tomas visits Carlos and Ana, while Miguel and Andrea are joined by Maria. The presence of guests triggers lust, rejection, infidelities, reconciliation and other consequences.

After 5 years of marriage, Ben is still madly in love. Until the day he discovers in public that his wife is cheating on him: humiliated and dumped in the process.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

An airline pilot and his wife are forced to face the consequences of her alcoholism when her addictions threaten her life and their daughter's safety. While the woman enters detox, her husband must face the truth of his enabling behavior.

After Ashley asks for a divorce, good-natured Carey runs to his friends, Julie and Paul, for support. He’s shocked to discover that the secret to their happiness is an open marriage, that is until Carey crosses the line and throws all of their relationships into chaos.

Overachieving actress Rebecca must come to grips with her failing marriage to stay-at-home dad Tom. While Rebecca's slacker brother Tobey can't seem to commit to his aspiring-novelist girlfriend, Elaine. As both relationships spin out of control, the two couples embark on a quest to rediscover the magic and romance of falling in love in New York.

A comedy about a married couple -- he's a sports lawyer, she's a psychologist -- which takes place on their 16th wedding anniversary, when they make some startling confessions.

As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.

A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble.

An actor's world comes crashing down after he learns that his wife has left him.

Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.

Eva is a divorced soon-to-be empty-nester wondering about her next act. Then she meets Marianne, the embodiment of her perfect self. Armed with a restored outlook on being middle-aged and single, Eva decides to take a chance on her new love interest Albert — a sweet, funny and like-minded man. But things get complicated when Eva discovers that Albert is in fact the dreaded ex–husband of Marianne...

Having thought that monogamy was never possible, a commitment-phobic career woman may have to face her fears when she meets a good guy.

Cal Weaver is living the American dream. He has a good job, a beautiful house, great children and a beautiful wife, named Emily. Cal's seemingly perfect life unravels, however, when he learns that Emily has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. Over 40 and suddenly single, Cal is adrift in the fickle world of dating. Enter, Jacob Palmer, a self-styled player who takes Cal under his wing and teaches him how to be a hit with the ladies.

Jackie is a divorced mother of two. Isabel is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie’s ex-husband Luke, forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. But when Jackie discovers she is ill, both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest, while they have the chance.

A mind-bending love story following Greg who, after recently being divorced and then fired, meets the mysterious Isabel, a woman living on the streets and convinced that the polluted, broken world around them is just a computer simulation. Doubtful at first, Greg eventually discovers there may be some truth to Isabel’s wild conspiracy.

She's a magazine writer who gives up her career for love and family. He's a playboy newspaper columnist who can't quite give up his old tricks. And if that combination doesn't give a relationship heartburn, nothing will.

A common friend's sudden death brings three men, married with children, to reconsider their lives and ultimately leave the country together. But mindless enthusiasm for regained freedom will be short-lived.

Faithful wife Melinda, who is tired of standing by her devious husband Robert, is enraged when it becomes clear she has been betrayed. That's when she lost it, and now she cannot let it go.

Tom and Janet have been happily married for years. But a visit from a mysterious stranger leads to a dead body, a lot of questions, and a tense couples' trip with friends who may not actually be friends at all.

Recently cuckolded and reeling from a messy divorce, a hapless former singer hits the road - and the bar - with his all-too-helpful best bud, in this hilarious romantic comedy.

Two years have passed. After missing their separation, the Leroy seem perfectly successful in their divorce. But the appearance of two new lovers in the life of Vincent and Florence will set fire to the powders. The match between the former spouses resumes.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.

A husband and wife reevaluate their marriage after their closest friends, another couple decide to split up after twelve years.

The son of a wealthy businessman finds solace in drugs and alcohol when he breaks up with his childhood love.

Alain, a successful Parisian publisher struggling to adapt to the digital revolution, has major doubts about the new manuscript of Léonard, one of his long-time authors — another work of auto-fiction recycling his love affair with a minor celebrity. Selena, Alain’s wife, a famous stage actress, is of the opposite opinion.

A drunken, self-destructive woman called Betty wanders into a Parisian bar where she meets middle-aged alcoholic Laure. Laure decides to take care of Betty. Recovering in a hotel room, Betty begins to recount to Laure the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy and unfaithful marriage.

Faced with sudden doubts about her marriage, a young New York mother teams up with her larger-than-life playboy father to tail her husband.

The klutzy yet stunning Rebecca Sommers walks in on her hunky boyfriend in bed with another woman. They break up and Rebecca starts to fall apart, but, with the help of her close girlfriends, she begins to date again. Unfortunately, the men she meets all happen to be crazy. John, her dorky guy friend, tries to express his secret love for Rebecca, but she's too busy to notice as she tries to come to terms with her breakup.

Three tales of love, ambition, and neurosis unfold in the city that never sleeps. In "Life Lessons" (Martin Scorsese), a tormented painter channels heartbreak into his art. In "Life Without Zoë" (Francis Ford Coppola), a precocious 12-year-old navigates privilege and loneliness in a Manhattan hotel. And in "Oedipus Wrecks" (Woody Allen), a man’s domineering mother literally becomes a looming presence over New York.

A middle-aged couple suspects foul play when their neighbor's wife suddenly drops dead.

A New York film director, working on his latest movie in Los Angeles, begins to reflect the actions in his movie and real life, especially when he begins an affair with the lead actress.

Lea and her husband Marc have known Francis and his wife Karine for a very long time. Over the years, each one of them has been assigned a specific role. The balance and dynamic of the group is blown up when Lea decides to write a novel, which turns into an immediate bestseller…

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.

Woody Allen stars as Val Waxman, a two-time Oscar winner turned washed-up, neurotic director in desperate need of a comeback. When it comes, Waxman finds himself backed into a corner: Work for his ex-wife Ellie or forfeit his last shot. Is Val blinded by love when he opts for the reconnect? Is love blind when it comes to Ellie's staunch support? Literally and figuratively, the proof is the picture.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

An estranged family gathers together in New York for an event celebrating the artistic work of their father.

A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.

A very gentle middle-aged man is married, but when he falls in love with another woman, he decides that to divorce his wife would humiliate her too much – so instead he decides to kill her.

Famous and wealthy funnyman George Simmons doesn't give much thought to how he treats people until a doctor delivers stunning health news, forcing George to reevaluate his priorities with a little help from aspiring stand-up comic Ira.

The separation of a long married couple goes awry when they fall for each other again.

A happy newlywed marriage counselor's views on wedded bliss get thrown for a loop when she finds out her parents are getting divorced.

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

Marjorie Turner is suffocating in her marriage and day to day life. An extramarital affair with a stranger seems to be the answer until her paramour has a fatal heart attack, and turns out to be less of a stranger than she could have thought...

Alice Tate, mother of two, with a marriage of 16 years, finds herself falling for a handsome sax player, Joe. Stricken with a backache, she consults herbalist Dr. Yang, who realizes that her problems are not related to her back, but in her mind and heart. Dr. Yang's magical herbs give Alice wondrous powers, taking her out of her well-established rut.

A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.

A straight-laced pharmacist's uneventful life spirals out of control when he starts an affair with a trophy wife customer who takes him on a joyride involving sex, drugs and possibly murder.

Andy Goodrich's life is upended when his wife enters a rehab program, leaving him on his own with their young kids. Goodrich leans on his daughter from his first marriage, Grace, as he ultimately evolves into the father Grace never had.

After 15 years as a couple, Ale and Alex decide to throw a party to celebrate their separation, leaving their loved ones perplexed.

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

A romantic comedy that brings together three disparate characters who are learning to face a challenging and often confusing world as they struggle together against a common demon—sex addiction.

A New York writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her.

Is love compatible with coupledom? And what of freedom and fidelity? These are some of the questions facing two married men.

A grieving widower is drawn into a custody battle over his granddaughter, whom he helped raise her entire life.

Bertram Pincus, a cranky, people-hating Manhattan dentist, develops the unwelcome ability to see dead people. Really annoying dead people. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy, a smooth-talking ghost, who pesters him into a romantic scheme involving his widow Gwen. They are soon entangled in a hilarious predicament between the now and the hereafter!

When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…

Left broke and homeless by his wealthy parents' divorce, a young man moves in with an old friend and finally meets the woman of his dreams -- only to discover she's already dating his friend.

Barbara and Oliver Rose live happily as a married couple. When Barbara starts to wonder what life would be like without Oliver and likes what she sees, the two begin a campaign to force each other to leave their house, with their divorce lawyer D'Amato caught in the middle.

A New York girl sets her father up with a beautiful woman in a shaky marriage while her half sister gets engaged.

Sandy is a stressed-out, single mom who learns that her ex-husband is marrying a younger woman. Her friend Jesse's parents don't know that she has a family or that her sister, Gabi is married to a woman. Jesse's friend, Kristin, is juggling motherhood of a toddler, a patient boyfriend who keeps proposing, and searching for her biological mother. Bradley is a widower who's trying to raise two daughters on his own, while Miranda is too busy with her career to worry about children. When their respective problems intersect and start coming to a head, the Mother's Day holiday takes on a special meaning for all.

On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.

After divorcing his ambitious singer wife, a middle-aged man begins a new relationship with a teacher.

A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.

Two old friends reconnect at their friend's funeral, and decide to exact revenge on the widower who wronged all three of them decades earlier.

Since his wife's death, Andrew Blake is depressed. In an ultimate impetus, he leaves London to go back to France, in the house he met her. This journey through happy days memories won't go as planned.

A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.

Newly divorced lawyer Nathan Del Amico is shaken up after he meets a doctor who claims that he can sense when select people are about to die. Though he doesn't believe the doctor, events in Nathan's life slowly make him think he's not long for this world.

If Paris is the city of lovers, it is also that ... ex! Antoine does not dare to commit, Didier regrets his ex-wife, Father Laurent must celebrate the marriage of his ex, Julie, Serge is harassed by Lise, the ex of his girlfriend of the moment, while Greg consoles With the dog ... of his ex! So many characters whose lives will be telescoped in a joyful disorder and who could fall back in love! But of whom? Whether they obsessed us or loved to hate them, deep down, it is difficult to forget their ex!

London publicist Helen, effortlessly slides between parallel storylines that show what happens when she does or does not catch a train back to her apartment. Love. Romantic entanglements. Deception. Trust. Friendship. Comedy. All come into focus as the two stories shift back and forth, overlap and surprisingly converge.

College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.

A wife finds out her husband has a mistress. She decides to propose her to share her life with her husband, alternating every two weeks.



