Films That Bring Out Your Hopeless Romantic Side

About Time

Words by: Caitlin Wildgoose-Davis

As a lover of love, one of my all-time favourite films is About Time. Centred around the life of Tim Lake, who discovers he can travel back into his past, it portrays his struggles as he attempts to navigate the world of romance and love. Throughout the film, director Richard Curtis couples typically British awkwardness, humour and poor weather with one of the most beautifully understated love stories on screen.

Tim and Mary initially meet on a blind date in a pitchblack restaurant called Dans Le Noir?; thus, they are doubly blind and able to connect emotionally and intellectually first. Their chemistry is evident even in darkness, which only grows when they see each other. However, due to unfortunate timing and circumstances, Tim is forced to travel back to this night and go elsewhere. This means he has to find Mary again, and he stops at nothing to do, attending the same Kate Moss exhibition day after day, desperately hoping that she will be there. In this, Tim displays the passion and commitment that us hopeless romantics dare to dream about.

One of the stand-out sequences is that of Tim and Mary’s wedding, which seems unconventional and eccentric from the beginning. Mary half-walks and half-dances down the aisle in a vibrant red dress “to the sound of some Italian weirdo singing a song called Il Mondo” while Tim dramatically mimes the lyrics to her. The Cornish wind and rain create chaos, drenching and blowing over the guests and causing the marquee to collapse, meaning everyone has to retreat into Tim’s family home for the rest of the celebrations. This would, for many people, be a disaster of a wedding day, but Tim and Mary laugh through it. They are simply happy to be together, and when Tim considers travelling back in time to choose a drier day, there is no need, as Mary says she wouldn’t change it “for the world”. To me, this highlights the modesty and genuineness of their love for each other.

We are also shown a brief but heartwarming montage at the end of the film. This depicts not only the characters we have gotten to know but also everyday people, young and old, experiencing moments of joy and love in their “extraordinary, ordinary” lives, as Tim puts it.

So what’s not to love?

Nevertheless, just as Tim learns that he should avoid using his ability too much, I have learned to avoid watching this film too often so that when I do, I can appreciate it all the more.

Normal People

Words by: Francesca Ionescu

It might seem an odd choice for a hopeless romantic. Based on Irish novelist Sally Rooney’s book, Normal People follows Marianne and Connell as they grow up, losing and finding each other until distance makes them sit on a living floor and promise: one will stay, and one will go.

Finishing the twelve-episode show, despite having read the book before, left me a bit angry and upset that after watching these two go through years together, always being separated by their miscommunication and pride, they do not get their happy ending. Connell and Marianne grow up together, switch places and lives, and yet they can’t seem to leave each other alone. But the hopeless romantic in me is soothed by one part of their story: the possibility of meeting someone to whom the world always draws you.

Normal People is not a show in which anyone talks much, yet the two protagonists create this palpable emotional intimacy, this sense that what you’re watching is so personal it feels intrusive. Their relationship begins and unfolds in secret, in the confined space of a room or his car and the fields they drive to. While this ends the love affair for the first time, Marianne changes herself, becomes a different person at University, and we get this sense that Connell is the only one to truly know her. It is such a beautiful thought that even when you try to trick the rest of the world, someone notices you and everything that makes you a real person.

Truly, the pain that both characters go through is what makes me crave their connection. Each other’s presence, in spite of bad boyfriends and shared bedrooms and that sense of not-belonging, is a cushion, something comforting in its familiarity. ‘I would never pretend not to know you, Connell’, heart-breaking in its simplicity – even when Marianne’s love did not seem reciprocated, she offered her heart and her kindness. I cannot say I wish for a relationship anywhere as tumultuous as Marianne and Connell’s, but it does fill my heart that someone could see you, at your best and your worst, in secret and in public, as a lover, a stranger, a friend and yet always come back to you as long as time allows.

Love And Other Drugs

Words by: Anushka

Kar

Surprisingly, most people I ask haven’t seen Love and Other Drugs, but after watching this film, you’ll realise the undeniable chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Everything about this film screams a passionate, unconditional, pull-at-the-heart-strings kind of love. A love that is at first painstakingly unrequited, but quickly evolves into the opposite. The story follows a young woman, Maggie, suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, and Jamie, a smart but uncaring medicine drop out, only interested in casual sex. Predictably, he falls in love with Maggie, who sees no point in a relationship due to her disease. Her charm and nonchalant nature attract Jamie, and he finds himself pining after her. It’s at this point the hopeless romantic is gripped, despite the film’s predictability: a man who pines for and willingly leaves his humility behind in order to prove himself to a woman who only wants him in bed. To win her over, he becomes a man found in novels, scripts and other forms of writing (by women).

Not only does he go back to medicine for her (!), but he reveals a vulnerability: how insecure he truly is. In allowing herself to finally fall for him, Maggie helps Jamie in overcoming these insecurities, while Jamie finds himself desperately trying to find a cure for her. Still, she rejects him because she resents how consumed he is in saving her; she believes she’s only holding him back in life. At the very end, as she makes her way to Canada, Jamie drives after her, making the grand gesture of stopping the bus she’s on, demanding she get down. While declaring he’s ‘knowingly full of shit’ he stutteringly confesses how deeply in love with her he is. The truth is, it’s also her humility she has to sacrifice. She knows in order to survive she needs someone to care for her, but in the larger picture, Jamie clarifies ‘everybody does.’ In his heart-melting, monologue,

We see a man evolve through his tender candidness; from a womanizer who cared about nothing in the world to a man who only wants the reality where he can love this woman, despite her disabilities, and wishes for nothing more. It’s the perfect representation of true love; one where flaws aren’t overlooked, but rather seen, accepted and tended to. While these days he might be called a ‘simp’, we see a man who pined for a woman so hard, he truly changed for the better. If that doesn’t leave you hopelessly romantic, I don’t know what will.