Film
A Man in Love
A Man in Love is an elegant, melancholy romance between a famous American actor and an obscure British actress who collide on a Roman film set. It's a film about the collision between public persona and private need, shot with the lush visual confidence of 1980s European cinema. For anyone who believes adult romance can be as gripping as any thriller.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a grown-up romance that lingers on the messy, unglamorous middle of an affair, with long quiet scenes that let feelings surface slowly.
Skip it if you need brisk pacing or a clear romantic payoff, since at over two hours it moves at its own unhurried speed and often sits with discomfort rather than resolving it.
What it asks of you: Settle in for a little over two hours of patient, character-led drama, where much of the meaning lives in glances, pauses and what goes unsaid between scenes.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Damage1992
Louis Malle's masterpiece about a respectable politician undone by obsession with his son's fiancée. Sensual, intelligent, genuinely transgressive in ways that matter—explores how desire can corrode everything.
But It's bleak and unglamorous about passion. The affair doesn't ennoble anyone. Some find it glacial rather than moving.

Shirley Valentine1989
A woman on holiday in Greece rediscovers herself through romance and self-knowledge. Warm and funny, but with real weight underneath. Pauline Collins is luminous, and it earns its optimism.
But The tone bounces between whimsy and introspection, which can feel uneven. Some scenes feel like they belong in a different movie.

Dangerous Liaisons1988
Seduction and betrayal in 18th-century France, shot with theatrical grandeur and ice-cold precision. Glenn Close and John Malkovich are lethal. Romance as warfare, shot like a perfect machine.
But It's elaborate and mannered. The stylization keeps you at arm's length, which is intentional but can feel cold.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Man in Love
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Last Year at Marienbad1961
Both films use romance as a mirror for identity and memory—not what happened, but what we choose to believe happened, and why. Both refuse easy answers.
Resnais's hypnotic film about a man who claims to have met a woman before, in a baroque hotel, a year ago. It's cinema as pure mood and uncertainty—seduction played as philosophy. Formally revolutionary, endlessly debatable.
But There is no plot. The same scenes repeat and contradict themselves. If you need clarity or narrative momentum, you will be frustrated. It's a puzzle that may not have an answer.

More like this (8)
Passion1986
Brian De Palma's film within a film about an affair between two women on a movie set in Prague. Visually dazzling, morally complicated, with Isabelle Huppert at her most magnetic and dangerous.
But De Palma's obsessive technique can feel exploitative. The plot is baroque and confusing by design. It's cinema about cinema, which isn't for everyone.

Another Woman1988
Woody Allen's serious film about a woman whose life is upended by overhearing another woman's therapy sessions. Introspective, adult, about how little we know of ourselves and others. Gena Rowlands is extraordinary.
But It's quiet and philosophical rather than dramatic. Some will find it ponderous. There's no external plot to hang onto.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being1988
Kundera adapted for film—a Prague-set romance about love, freedom, and the weight of choice. Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche navigate philosophy through desire. Beautiful and intellectually serious.
But It's schematic. The film stops for ideas. Some scenes feel like filmed essays rather than lived moments. The philosophy can feel imposed.

Betrayal1983
Pinter's play about an affair, told in reverse chronological order. Each scene peels back another layer of deception and justification. Elegant, cruel, and brief. Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons are superb.
But The reverse structure can feel like a gimmick rather than an insight. Pinter's sparse dialogue won't feel like naturalism. It's more idea than feeling.

Plenty1985
Meryl Streep as a woman unraveling in post-war London, her idealism curdled by reality and a secret wartime affair. Gorgeous cinematography, powerful performances, about how the past colonizes the present.
But The structure is fragmented and sometimes opaque. The protagonist becomes increasingly difficult to like. Some find it frustrating rather than moving.

A Room with a View1986
Ivory and Merchant's Forster adaptation about a young woman choosing between passion and respectability in Edwardian Italy and England. Visually sumptuous, morally clear, genuinely romantic without being saccharine.
But The pacing is leisurely. Some scenes feel mannered and precious. If you're impatient with period detail and class minutiae, it will feel slow.

Lola Montès1955
Both center the erosion of a woman by fame and proximity to a famous man's world. Both use visual beauty to show how beauty itself can be a trap. Both are about the distance between the persona and the person.
Ophüls' final film, a jeweled tragedy about a famous courtesan's life told in fragmented, non-linear scenes within a circus. Cinematically voluptuous and formally daring. Cinema at its most purely visual and emotionally devastating.
But It's in Technicolor CinemaScope and looks like a costume fantasy, but it's actually a film about the cost of being desired. The structure takes work to follow. Some find it too stylized to touch them.

Scenes from a Marriage2021
Both films stake everything on two people in a room, the chemistry between them, and the question of whether passion and knowledge can coexist. Both are about the weight of adult desire unsentimentalized.
Bergman's television series about a marriage across its full arc—passion, habit, betrayal, reckoning. Six episodes of devastating intimacy. The gold standard for adult drama. Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson are the entire world.
But It's six hours. It's Swedish and introspective. There's no music, no visual tricks, just two people and a room and the machinery of attachment grinding. Bleak doesn't cover it.

People
Cast
Peter CoyoteSteve Elliott
Greta ScacchiJane Steiner
Jamie Lee CurtisSusan Elliott
Claudia CardinaleJulia Steiner
Peter RiegertMichael Pozner
John BerryHarry Steiner
Vincent LindonBruno Schlosser
Jean PigozziDante Pizani- Elia KatzSam
Konstantin AleksandrovDe Vitta
Jean-Claude de GorosSandro
Michele MelegaPaolo
Directing
- Diane KurysDirector
Writing
- Diane KurysWriter
- Olivier SchatzkyWriter
Production
- Diane KurysProducer
- Michel SeydouxProducer
Recommended by
On Golden Pond, Ordinary Love, The Eternal Memory, The Last Station, Conversations with My Gardener