10 Heaviest Romance Movies of All Time, Ranked

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Jeremy has more than 2200 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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It’s probably for the best that most movies about love aren’t total downers, because romantic comedies would probably cease to be a genre/sub-genre if all movies about love were. When Harry Met Sally isn't only great because the characters earn their happiness in the end, but all that stuff definitely helps. And then even famously bittersweet romance movies, like Casablanca, do at least have some sweet, so calling them “heavy” feels like a stretch.

The following movies, on the other hand? There’s no stretching involved if you want to call them heavy, despairing, intense, or just emotionally exhausting in a general kind of way. Some are sadder and more harrowing than others, and the older movies here might not punch you in the gut quite as hard as the more recent ones, but they're all worth including nonetheless. Some aren’t primarily romance movies, either, but if “romance” is listed as one of the genres on Letterboxd, then a movie qualifies for inclusion here.

10 'Breaking the Waves' (1996)

Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves

A few years before he directed one of the most intense musicals of all time, Lars von Trier also directed one of the heaviest romance films of all time: Breaking the Waves. This one’s about a couple who feel challenged physically and emotionally when one is injured and paralyzed in an accident, and then further complexities come about when he says his partner should start seeing other people, intimately and stuff.

The whole thing is more than 2.5 hours long, and it’s paced slowly while progressively getting into more complicated and harrowing territory on an emotional front as it creeps along. Breaking the Waves is great, and the acting here is especially strong, but getting through the film itself does feel like an ordeal, or at least something of an endurance test (all by design, of course, but still).

9 'Trouble Every Day' (2001)

It doesn’t take so long for Trouble Every Day to venture into horror territory to mean it feels like a spoiler saying the horror genre is relevant here, but outlining what kind of horror is found here might be a step too far. So, in the interest of being vague, it’s about two newlyweds going on a honeymoon, and there are some alarming things that happen on said honeymoon.

If you don’t have a strong stomach, then stay the hell away from Trouble Every Day, because it’s incredibly squirm-inducing during its more visceral moments. It captures a certain intensity regarding love and relationships, and finds a reliably good horror-related metaphor to convey all that intensity, but it is a lot to handle and most certainly not for everyone (probably not even for some; it’s for a very small/niche group… agh, and even then…).

8 'Amour' (2012)

Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintingnant in Amour

Amour is about love, as the title suggests, but it’s not a very happy movie about love. The couple at the center of this one are both in their 80s, living through the final stages of their lives, and then one of them suffers a stroke, which intensifies the difficulties they were already experiencing. And it’s a movie directed by Michael Haneke, who’s about as willing as Lars von Trier to make dark and uncompromising films about human nature, so…

That all means Amour is bleak. It probably goes without saying, unless you don’t know much about Haneke’s reputation and go in expecting a movie about love that’s also itself lovely. But it is empathetic, to a certain extent, and it also feels like an important film with what it has to say about getting old and everything, though calling it a hard watch is an understatement.

7 'Cabaret' (1972)

This one isn't entirely a romance film, but Cabaret is listed as a music/drama/romance movie on Letterboxd, so it’s being included here. And, in fairness, quite a bit of the narrative explores the complicated love lives of the main characters here, but outside their relationships, they all treat life pretty simply, to an eventually dangerous extent, since all their partying is done in Berlin in the 1930s, while fascism continues to build around them.

That’s where the heavy and thematically complex part of Cabaret comes in, because it goes beyond being a musical/romance film by unpacking how things that were terrible in hindsight can come to be and also be overlooked by people living in the moment. Call it a secret horror movie, if you want to, or one of the best pre-World War II movies (if such a term exists) ever made.

6 'Vertigo' (1958)

Most of Alfred Hitchcock’s grim/intense movies are psychological thrillers or horror movies, and Vertigo is also something of a thriller, but it might well be easier to define as a psychological romance movie. It gets right inside the head of someone who feels obsessed with another person, and after falling in too deep with his feelings, he starts trying to change her to be something he believes he can feel even more feelings towards.

Vertigo is one of those famously “ahead of their time” kind of movies, maybe because people just didn’t know how to react to something this uniquely unnerving back in 1958. It’s one of the very best Hitchcock movies more generally speaking, or maybe even his very best; the argument is there to be made, and has indeed been made before (hey there, Sight & Sound).

5 'West Side Story' (1961)

It’s based on Romeo and Juliet, or at least puts a spin on the narrative established there (not a direct adaptation, though), so of course West Side Story is going to be heavy-going. Here, it’s about a conflict between two gangs in New York City during the late 1950s, and how that conflict gets intensified when a man affiliated with one gang falls in love with someone who has connections to people in the other gang.

Since it’s an older movie, and owing to the fact that it’s not quite as depressing as Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story might not shock or unnerve modern-day viewers to the same extent as some other movies here, but still, it’s pretty full-on and sad, even with how theatrical it gets. West Side Story taps into something real and tangible while also being broad and dazzling on a visual/stylistic front, with the balancing act here, on the part of the filmmakers, being something to behold.

4 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (2004)

Joel and Clementine cuddling in bed together in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another movie about love that’s not particularly romantic, although settling on just calling it a break-up movie might be doing it a disservice. It’s about two people who've fallen out of love, and a procedure that allows people to wipe all memories of their ex-partners, but then things get a bit more dramatic and tense when it becomes apparent that doing so has some serious drawbacks.

That’s putting it mildly. And also, that’s over-simplifying Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, since it’s an incredibly complex film with what it wants to explore, and also one that might well be among the most original sci-fi movies of the 21st century so far. It’s great and it’s greatly upsetting, and more or less lives up to its reputation as something of a modern masterpiece.

3 'In the Realm of the Senses' (1976)

A man and woman stand under an umbrella looking toward the camera in In the Realm of the Senses

Even taking into account the NC-17 rating, In the Realm of the Senses is surprisingly disturbing and graphic. You might also think the fact that it’s half a century old would mitigate some of the brutality here, but that’s also not the case. Essentially, it’s about two people who engage in a very strange – and eventually violent – sexual relationship, and then it all ends in a way that you can’t really unsee, once seen.

No matter how prepared you think you are, you'll probably come away feeling some level of disturbed by In the Realm of the Senses.

It's a psychological drama first, and if it’s a romance movie second, then it’s a distant second, to the point where some might argue it doesn’t even really qualify as a romance film. It’s just about a very dark side of love, and done in a way where no punches come even close to being pulled, so no matter how prepared you think you are, you'll probably come away feeling some level of disturbed by the whole thing.

2 'Leaving Las Vegas' (1995)

Addiction is at the center of Leaving Las Vegas, narratively and thematically, since it’s about a man who wants to end his life by essentially drinking himself to death in the titular city. While there, he does connect with someone on an emotional level, which is where the romantic side of Leaving Las Vegas comes in, but the darkness present in the premise (and the life of the main character) never really goes away.

It's all incredibly overwhelming and despairing. You do feel this one deeply, even if doing that feeling is unsurprisingly unpleasant. It’s the movie that won Nicolas Cage an Oscar, and while he goes quite big here, he doesn’t go over-the-top in a more explosive or in any manner “entertaining” way, so that’s further disarming and disquieting if you're more used to Cage as something of a meme/bombastic acting force of nature.

1 'Blue Valentine' (2010)

Ryan Gosling holding Michelle Williams' face in his hands in 'Blue Valentine'

More “Blue” than it is “Valentine,” Blue Valentine is perhaps the worst romance film you could watch on Valentine’s Day, or on any date night, really. It goes against the majority of movies that feature some sort of break-up between the main characters, because such separations usually last a few scenes, or sometimes just a few minutes, while in Blue Valentine, the whole movie is about things falling apart and never really being rebuilt.

Marriage Story at least suggests some kind of catharsis or way to move past things might be possible, while Scenes from a Marriage has a distant sequel that isn't quite as cutting or intense, and provides a little by way of hope. They're comparable movies otherwise, but Blue Valentine is stronger as far as the harrowing side of things is concerned. It’s one of those quintessential “definitely watch once and then probably never watch again” kind of movies.