Love

Jean-Jacques Beineix’s story of a volatile, highly sexual relationship was one of the most successful French films of the 1980s.

An enigmatic housemaid and her wealthy, totalitarian employer begin an affair that will have disastrous consequences for them both.

Todd Solondz directs Selma Blair and Jordan Gelber in this delightfully dark satire as romance blooms between a toy collector and a depressed woman.

Jessica Hausner’s long-awaited follow-up to Lourdes is a devilish anti-Rom-Com in which German poet seeks mates for a suicide pact.

A pair of newlyweds endure a honeymoon staying with the groom's parents in a comedy from East Is East writer Ayub Khan-Din.

Roberto Rossellini’s controversial two-part anthology film showcasing the manifold talents of his then-wife Anna Magnani.

An unnamed man travels back to Strasbourg with aspirations to track down a girl he asked for directions six years earlier.

Jean Cocteau’s ravishingly restored 1946 film is a cinematic classic. “Five stars. [This] magical exploration of the fairytale is a compelling and bizarre masterpiece” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Fassbinder's visual and verbal extravaganza about a successful but lonely fashion designer who falls in love with a beautiful younger woman.

Jean-Luc Godard’s extraordinary debut feature, an insouciant and iconoclastic crime film that paved the way for the French New Wave.

Sarah Gavron’s subtle and intelligent adaptation of Monica Ali’s acclaimed novel charts the experiences of a Bangladeshi woman in London.

Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher’s London.

Noël Coward’s tale of a love affair, thrillingly played out with tight British reserve.

A bizarre study of obsession focusing on a teenage boy who is torn between the charms of a fleshly female prostitute and the sadism of an older man.

Based on the best-selling 1929 novel by Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper stars in Frank Borzage's Oscar-winning adaptation of the tragic Great War romance.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's dangerous obsession.

An ingenious gay homage to Brief Encounter.

Max Ophuls' intricately constructed and elegantly designed drama is a searing study of fateful passion wound up in deceits, deals and desires.

Fassbinder’s international breakthrough, this unconventional love story combines lucid social analysis with devastating emotional power.

Disturbing but deeply stylish South African drama about a teacher who becomes obsessed with an under-age pupil in his class, with tragic consequences.

David Lean’s other, lesser known film about a love triangle spent too long in Brief Encounter’s shadow, but is now regarded as a fine, gripping drama.

When a happily married man decides to volunteer at his son’s school, he begins to form a romantic bond with a teacher in this intimate French drama.

This British sci-fi comedy, adapted from a John Wyndham story, follows a man’s search to find the ideal woman whom he briefly meets in a parallel universe.

On a country picnic, a young girl leaves her family for a while and succumbs to an all-too-brief romance in Jean Renoir's sensuous tribute to the countryside.

Roberto Rossellini's acerbic but finally very moving masterpiece about marital crisis boasts great performances from Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders

A lesbian couple arouse the interest of their new neighbour in this erotic tale of voyeurism, power dressing and fantasy.

Moira Shearer’s ballerina is torn between love and her career in Powell and Pressburger’s hugely influential melodrama.

Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier bring Hollywood glitz to the love affair between Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton in the midst of political turmoil.

Gothic chiller based on the novel by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Jean Simmons stars as an heiress pursued by her unbalanced uncle and his perverted son.

The BFI National Archive restoration of one of Anthony Asquith's finest silent films set in London's Underground, with a new score.