The History of LoveMovies like The History of Love
- Key Features:
- Lost love, Intergenerational relationships, Literary adaptation, Grief, Family secrets, Searching, Hope, Loneliness, Parallel narratives
- Tone:
- poetic, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Literary enthusiasts, Romantics, Drama lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Longing → Discovery → Acceptance
The History of Love

The story of a long-lost book that mysteriously reappears and connects an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her mother's loneliness.
The History of Love
After tragedy strikes Henry and Penny, he befriends a tenacious young girl and discovers she is constructing a raft to sail across the Atlantic to find her lost father. Together, along with some unlikely friends, they set forth to construct the vessel and subsequently rebuild their lives.

A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late.

Due to a genetic disorder, handsome librarian Henry DeTamble involuntarily zips through time, appearing at various moments in the life of his true love, the beautiful artist Clare Abshire.

After 29-year-old Adaline recovers from a nearly lethal accident, she inexplicably stops growing older. As the years stretch on and on, Adaline keeps her secret to herself until she meets a man who changes her life.

A chronicle of the unconditional love between a mother and her daughter, from 1958 to the present day, which is endangered by an unsteady and manipulative father.

An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.

They knew each other long ago: a man and a woman whose dazzling and unexpected romance captured in the now-iconic film revolutionized our understanding of love. Today, the former race car driver seems lost in the pathways of his memory. In order to help him, his son seeks out the woman his father wasn’t able to cherish but whom he constantly revisits in his thoughts and dreams. Anne reunites with Jean-Louis and their story picks up where they left it…

Born under unusual circumstances, Benjamin Button springs into being as an elderly man in a New Orleans nursing home and ages in reverse. Twelve years after his birth, he meets Daisy, a child who flits in and out of his life as she grows up to be a dancer. Though he has all sorts of unusual adventures over the course of his life, it is his relationship with Daisy, and the hope that they will come together at the right time, that drives Benjamin forward.

A long love story, seen through the memories of one young couple. The journey through the years of two individuals, united, divided, happy, unhappy, deeply in love, or in love with others, in a single stream of emotions and shades of feeling. Over the course of the film, he learns that love can indeed last, while she learns to live with nostalgia.

An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.

True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.

A sea captain makes a bet in a cafe with a friend that he will marry the first woman who walks in.

A haunting ghost story spanning two worlds, two centuries apart. When 13 year old Tolly finds he can mysteriously travel between the two, he begins an adventure that unlocks family secrets laid buried for generations.

The lives of a young couple intertwine with a much older man as he reflects back on a lost love while he's trapped in an automobile crash.

Victor, a disillusioned 60-something whose marriage is on the rocks, opts to relive the week of his life when, 40 years earlier, he met his true love through a company that allows customers to return to the time period of their choosing.

A story of two famous actors who used to be a couple. They reunite after the son's death and receive a letter asking them to visit five places at Death Valley, which will make the son reappear.

A man is broken hearted at the loss of his lover, then later visits the same pain on the next woman with whom he becomes involved.

After author Mia finds love with single father Emil, their happiness is put to the test as they undergo fertility treatments to have kids of their own.

While searching for his fiancee Ritsuko, Sakutarou rediscovers through flashbacks the void deep within him caused by the events from his high school days.

In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.

A pair of former high school sweethearts reunite after many years when they return to visit their small hometown.

Told from the man's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

Laura and Harrison have the picture-perfect romance built on the foundation of a shared love of music. After a deadly accident, Laura gets the chance to save the love of her life when she discovers that their mixtape can transport her back in time.

The day she turns 40, Marguerite Flora, a successful rep for a nuclear power company, begins receiving letters she'd sent to herself at age seven. The letters tell her what to do if her life hasn't turned out the way she thought it should, when she was living in poverty with her mother and brother in a small village in southern France. She decides to go back to her birthplace to get the lawyer to stop the letters, but also to visit her childhood sweetheart and her long-forgotten brother, in order to find peace within herself.

A young and cynical female journalist learns love may transcend trials and time as she discovers a story that will change her life forever. When war separates lovers on their wedding anniversary Feb. 14, 1944 at LA Union Train Station, Navy pilot Neil Thomas makes a promise he isn't sure he can keep - to return to the train station safe by their next anniversary. For sixty years Caroline Thomas keeps her promise by waiting at the train station until her missing in action husband can finally keep his with the "lost valentine." The message and meaning shows romance and love can be real; worth fighting, and maybe even dying for.

Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

Ji-hae's friend is having problems expressing her feelings to the boy she loves, so she asks Ji-hae to write e-mails to him in her name. As the boy falls in love with her letters, Ji-hae discovers the story of her mother's romance which is remarkably similar to her own circumstances.

United by the unexpected inheritance of a house in Normandy, four estranged cousins discover their family history by retracing their ancestor's steps.

A man tries to make his wife fall in love with him again, after waking up in an alternate reality where she never knew him.

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.

The duty manager of a seaside cinema, who is struggling with her mental health, forms a relationship with a new employee on the south coast of England in the 1980s.

Sasha is a 25-year-old orphan who asks Nicole, a married Frenchwoman in her forties, for advice to seduce Benedetta, his long-unrequited love. The two eventually bond over their shared past traumas and pains of love, until...

Maud Bailey, a brilliant English academic, is researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar in London to study Randolph Henry Ash, now best-known for a collection of poems dedicated to his wife. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash to La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, echoing the journey of the couple over a century earlier.

Told from the woman's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

Sparks fly after Ali and Ava meet through their shared affection for Sofia, the child of Ali’s tenants whom Ava teaches. Ali finds comfort in Ava’s warmth and kindness while Ava finds Ali’s complexity and humour irresistible. As the pair begin to form a deep connection they have to find a way to keep their newfound passion from being overshadowed by the stresses and struggles of their separate lives and histories.

Louise, a widow with two children, almost crushes a stranger with her car. She takes care of him, even if he's not really wounded. It turns out that he has mental disorders and that they can help each other much more than they thought.

Together for 20 years, a couple that has grown apart over time receives difficult news that will impact the entire family. As they try to make sense of the changes, they end up rediscovering their love for one another.

An investigation into one woman’s memory as she‘s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

Nina and Madeleine have been sharing their lives and the landing between their two apartments for decades. After more than 20 years of loving in the shadows, Madeleine promises Nina she will tell her family the truth. It takes an unexpected event to show her the importance of living your truth.

On a random night, Marco and Laura meet at a karaoke bar and sing the song "Evidências" together. Since then, they fell in love and formed a couple that seemed perfect, until the moment they said “yes”. Without understanding what happened, now, every time this song plays, Marco will travel through his memories with Laura.

A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.

Valentine marries at the end of the 19th century, and love passes through her family from generation to generation.

After twenty years away, Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king has finally returned home, but much has changed in his kingdom since he left to fight in the Trojan war.

Paralyzed from a crash, Nicola falls for his physiotherapist Lucia. Franco and Manuela seek fertility treatment in Barcelona. Filippo and Fosco, a gay couple, plan their wedding. Ernesto, a waiter, has an affair with Spanish cook Cecilia.

After teenage ambulance driver Ernest Hemingway takes shrapnel in the leg during World War I, he falls in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a beautiful older nurse at the hospital where he's sent to recover. Their affair slowly blossoms, until Hemingway boldly asks Agnes to be his wife and journey to America with him.

A young man returns to his ex-girlfriend and true love to discover the source of her increasing depression. As the young man earnestly tries to help his girlfriend through her troubles, their love begins to bloom.

A woman who works for a non-governmental organization (NGO) forms a special relationship with a young boy in war-torn Chechnya.

Ouyang Feng is a heartbroken and cynical man who spends his days in the desert, connecting expert swordsmen with those seeking revenge and willing to pay for it. Throughout five seasons in exile, Ouyang spins tales of his clients' unrequited loves and unusual acts of bravery.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

A seven-hour epic adaptation of the novel by Leo Tolstoy. The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

Two colleagues at a revolutionary research lab design technology to improve and perfect romantic relationships. As their work progresses, their discoveries become more profound.

Dora, raises her two children with the help of her eccentric family, free-spirited best friend, and a charming poet-turned- nanny.

While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

20-year-old Margaux makes the acquaintance of 45-year-old Margaux: they have a lot in common – so much so that it turns out they are one and the same person, at two different ages and stages of their life…

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

Love at Twenty unites five directors from five different countries to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The mind of Pierre Bérard, a successful middle-aged architect, is torn between his unstable present with Hélène, his younger lover, and his happy memories of the past with Catherine, his ex-wife; but his true destiny awaits him at a crossroads on his way to Rennes…

On the brink of the First World War, Albert's beloved horse Joey is sold to the Cavalry by his father. Against the backdrop of the Great War, Joey begins an odyssey full of danger, joy, and sorrow, and he transforms everyone he meets along the way. Meanwhile, Albert, unable to forget his equine friend, searches the battlefields of France to find Joey and bring him home.

Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.

Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the football team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it – the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.

Sophia is a philosophy professor in Montreal and has lived as a couple with Xavier for 10 years. Sylvain is a carpenter in the Laurentians and must renovate their country house. When Sophia meets Sylvain for the first time, it’s love at first sight. Opposites attract, but can it last?

Ahmed, 18, is French of Algerian origin. He grew up in the Parisian suburbs. On the benches of the university, he meets Farah, a young Tunisian full of energy recently arrived from Tunis. While discovering a body of sensual and erotic Arabic literature that he never knew existed, Ahmed falls deeply in love with this girl, and although literally overwhelmed by desire, he will try to resist it.

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

A young Jewish girl, Sara, is looking to escape the clutches of the Third Reich after seeing her parents and sister brutally slain by a smuggler who betrayed them while attempting to escape to England. Terrified, she is sheltered by her childhood friend Jean, a homosexual in a clandestine relationship with his lover Philippe.

2038: George Almore is working on a true human-equivalent AI, and his latest prototype is almost ready. This sensitive phase is also the riskiest as he has a goal that must be hidden at all costs—being reunited with his dead wife.

A supernatural love story that centers on two parents whose life together falls apart after their son dies. The man, now a successful lawyer, and the woman, now married and an author, get a chance at reconciliation ten years later.

Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.

After the renewed flings with their former lovers prove to be disastrously unlike the romantic memories, an unfaithful couple returns to each other.

Short film to a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover's face melts off, she dons a dress from the shadow of a bell and becomes a dandelion, ants crawl out of a hand and become Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention the turtles with faces on their backs that collide to form a ballerina, or the bizarre baseball game.

Étienne is barely twenty when he falls in love with Valérie. They are hardly any more when their daughter Rosa is born. And then, one day, Valérie leaves and never returns. He chooses not to make a drama of it and builds a happy life for him and his child. Sixteen years later, when Rosa is about to lead her own life, Étienne recognizes his wife in a television report. The past brutally resurfaces, and father and daughter are propelled into one last chaotic family journey.

When illness strikes two people who are polar opposites, life and death bring them together in surprising ways.

A young journalist in London becomes obsessed with a series of letters she discovers that recounts an intense star-crossed love affair from the 1960s.

The hidden memoir of an elderly woman confined to a mental hospital reveals the history of her passionate yet tortured life, and of the religious and political upheavals in Ireland during the 1920s and 30s.

Harriet finds art imitating life when she discovers certain songs can transport her back in time – literally. While she relives the past through romantic memories of her former boyfriend, her time travelling collides with a burgeoning new love interest in the present. As she takes her journey through the hypnotic connection between music and memory, she wonders – even if she could change the past, should she?

A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.

Once upon a time there was Louise and her friend, the magician. But his last trick left a bitter taste in her mouth. He disappeared in a curtain of smoke… never to appear again. This is too much for the young woman. Devastated by endless grief, Louise is sent to a psychiatric asylum, resigned to the idea that she will swallow pills till the end of her days. Yet nine months later she gives birth to a child who is likely to have a big problem for his future class pictures, since he’s invisible. But Louise doesn’t care. He’s her angel and, wanting to protect him from this cruel world, she decides to keep his existence a secret. Years later, Louise’s angel has grown up. He even managed to find a girlfriend; Madeleine. The two become inseparable, for Madeleine never judges him. And for good reason: she’s blind.

Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in the experiment causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order.

Nick and Janine live in bliss until her ex warps time to try to tear them apart by using Nick's old girlfriend. As Nick's memories and reality disappear, he must decide what he's willing to sacrifice to save -- or let go of -- everything he loves.

A once-respected surgeon who's lost his family and his memory gets a chance at redemption when he reconnects with someone from his forgotten past.

Emma and Jesse are living the perfect life together, until Jesse disappears in a tragic helicopter crash on their first wedding anniversary. Four years later, Emma has found happiness again and is about to marry her best friend when Jesse resurfaces, turning her world upside down and leaving her torn between two great loves.

As their romance unfolds, Jade and David's growing love for one another becomes the scorn of Jade's father. However, when Jade's grades begin to drop, her father forbids the young couple from seeing each other for 30 days. Driven insane with frustration and desire, David attempts to reverse the decision, with catastrophic results.

Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.

Nino and Caterina have been married for 65 years. After Caterina's death, their daughter Elisabetta, trying to help her father to overcome the loss, hires an author to write a book on their love story.

Marc and Rebeca, a young couple, travel to an old country house that used to belong to their family. Once there, they write the shared history of their roots, creating a huge family tree that harbours relationships of love, heartbreak, sex, madness, jealousy and infidelity, and under which also lies a history laden with secrets.

When the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his flirtatious wife Caitlin sweep into war-torn London, the last thing they expect is to bump into Dylan's childhood sweetheart Vera. Despite her joy at seeing Dylan after so many years, Vera is swept off her feet by a dashing officer, William Killick, and finds herself torn between the open adoration of her new found beau and the wily charms of the exotic Welshman.

Ten years ago, on a train home during the busy Spring Festival travel period, fate brings Xiaoxiao and Jianqing together. Like many young couples, they meet, fall in love, and strive to make it work, but eventually, the harsh realities of life make them drift apart. Ten years later, they run into each other again. Will they make the most of this second chance and rekindle what they once lost?

A successful writer of children's books, Stephen Lewis is confronted with the unthinkable—he loses his only child, four-year-old Kate, in a supermarket. In one horrifying moment that replays itself over the years that follow, Stephen realises his daughter is gone. Kate's absence sets Stephen and his wife on diverging paths as both struggle with an all-consuming grief.

A privileged girl and a charismatic boy's instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

A woman is taken along with her mother in 1910 to a far-away desert by her husband, and after his passing, is forced to spend the next 59 years of her life hopelessly trying to escape it.

A solitary scholar discovers an ancient bottle while on a trip to Istanbul and unleashes a djinn who offers her three wishes. Filled with reluctance, she is unable to come up with one, so the djinn tries to inspire her with his stories.

A passionate love story set against a backdrop of sexual freedom, loosely based on the relationship between 19th century authors Pierre Louÿs and Marie de Régnier.

An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.

Ten years have gone by since Elena's six-year old son has disappeared. The last thing she heard of him was a phone call he gave her, saying that he was lost on a beach in France and couldn't find his father. Nowadays, Elena lives on this same beach and manages a restaurant. She is finally beginning to emerge from this tragic episode when she meets a French teenager who strongly reminds her of her lost son. The two of them will embark on a relationship which will sow chaos and distrust around them.


