Film

Take This Waltz

Sarah Polley's tender, digressive love story about what happens when attraction meets commitment. Michelle Williams plays a woman caught between the comfortable known and the seductive unknown. It's playful and melancholy at once—less about plot than texture, mood, the small devastating moments that remake a life. For anyone who's felt desire complicate contentment.

TMDb rating3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to messy, unflattering portraits of desire, where a bad decision is also a recognisable one and the film trusts you to sit with the discomfort.

Skip it if you want a brisk plot or a clear moral line; this is slow, observational and often squirmy, and its pleasures are small, in glances and kitchens rather than events.

What it asks of you: A patient, close-up pace across just under two hours, with long quiet stretches where tension builds from what people don't say.

If you liked this

Blue Valentine2010

Derek Cianfrance's unflinching portrait of a relationship's rise and fall. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give raw, intimate performances that burrow under your skin. It's about love without sentimentality.

But The structure jumps between past and present, which can feel narratively messy. And it's genuinely bleak—not the kind of film that leaves you feeling optimistic.

Blue Valentine poster

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004

Michel Gondry's masterpiece about erasure and longing. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet playing people trying to undo their relationship. The visual inventiveness serves the emotional core perfectly.

But It's deliberately disorienting—scenes circle back, timelines collapse. Some find it too clever; others just find it exhausting.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind poster

Before Sunrise1995

Richard Linklater's perfect film about desire and connection. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy spend one night talking through Vienna. It's proof that restraint and conversation can be thrilling.

But Nothing happens. If you need plot momentum or dramatic turns, this will feel like waiting in an airport with someone. That's the whole point, which won't console you if you hate it.

Before Sunrise poster

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both are love stories that fracture identity, where desire unmakes the self. Both trust the audience to sit with ambiguity and emotional truth over narrative sense.

David Lynch's fractured, obsessive love story disguised as a noir about Hollywood. Naomi Watts and Laura Harring caught in a hallucinatory dance of desire and identity. It's Polley's spiritual ancestor—romantic, maddening, impossible to fully untangle.

But It willfully refuses clarity. The narrative doesn't cohere; Lynch wants you disoriented. If you need certainty about what a film is doing, this will infuriate you.

Mulholland Drive poster
More like this (7)

The Kids Are All Right2010

Lisa Cholodenko's funny, generous drama about a family reorganized by desire. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple, Mark Ruffalo as the catalyst. It finds the absurdity and the genuine stakes simultaneously.

But The ending can feel convenient if you're watching for conflict to rupture everything. It's more interested in people staying messy and connected than in drama resolving neatly.

The Kids Are All Right poster

Begin Again2014

John Carney's film about creative people adrift after loss and heartbreak. Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo rebuilding something together. It trusts that the small moments—making a song, wandering the city—matter as much as the big ones.

But The plot is thin and the music can feel precious. If you don't buy into the tone early, the indie-film sensibility will feel self-indulgent.

Begin Again poster

Moonlight2016

Barry Jenkins' immaculate film about desire, identity, and connection across a lifetime. Three acts, three stages of a man's life. Every frame is composed with intention; every silence speaks.

But It's meditative and slow. Dialogue is sparse. If you need a film to explain things to you, this will feel opaque. Its power comes through feeling, not explanation.

Moonlight poster

Annie Hall1977

Woody Allen at his best—neurotic, funny, genuinely moving. Diane Keaton and Allen as a couple that loves each other and can't quite make it work. It's about the impossibility of perfect relationships and the ache of that impossibility.

But Allen's persona can grate, especially now. And it's fundamentally pessimistic about love, which some find either honest or depressing depending on the day.

Annie Hall poster

The Worst Person in the World2021

Joachim Trier's comic and heartbreaking portrait of a woman navigating love, work, and meaning in her late twenties. Renate Reinsve is luminous. It captures the particular chaos of being young and wanting everything at once.

But It's languid and deliberately formless. Oslo in winter isn't for everyone. And the protagonist's self-absorption, while honest, can feel exhausting if you need to like the person you're watching.

The Worst Person in the World poster

Shoplifters2018

Hirokazu Kore-eda's masterpiece about a found family held together by love and desperation. It's funny and tender and heartbreaking. The performances feel like watching real people, not acting.

But It's in Japanese with subtitles. And it's slower-paced than mainstream cinema—Kore-eda never hurries. Some will find that meditative; others will find it slow.

Shoplifters poster

Chungking Express1994

Both are essentially about the texture of longing rather than its outcome. Both move by association and feeling rather than narrative logic. Both make a city—Toronto, Hong Kong—as much a character as the people.

Wong Kar-wai's dazzling film about two cops nursing heartbreak in Hong Kong. It's visual intoxication—neon-soaked, digressive, more interested in mood and longing than plot. Pure cinema about the specific ache of missing someone.

But The pacing is glacial. Almost nothing conventional happens. If you watch films for forward momentum, this is styled melancholy that never resolves into story. That's the point, but the point might bore you.

Chungking Express poster

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