If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for the sappiest of movie genres: the rom-com. Within the chronology of women’s liberation, my formative years landed during a funny moment in time. Born after second-wave feminist intellectualism made it acceptable—encouraged, even—for women to challenge the marriage industrial complex meant that I was raised during an era when romance was being given the side eye. But I also grew up during the golden age of the contemporary romantic comedy (the 1990s and early 2000s), so my indoctrination into the genre’s most reckless tropes—ones that valued coupledom over individualism, love over ambition, and physical beauty above all else—was total.
The fact that my worldview on romance has been shaped by rom-coms does not make me unique. What is perhaps unusual is the obsessive fervor with which I have clung to them. By the time I was fourteen, I’d devoted roughly 90 hours to My Best Friend’s Wedding alone, watching it on repeat until I could perform the entire script as a one-woman show. As I grew older, I continued consuming rom-coms so rapaciously that I gave myself a reputation, eventually learning that my friends had not indulged in the genre to quite the degree I had. In fact, they were quick to point out its shortcomings, citing the Bechdel-Wallace Test, the heteronormativity, and how narrowly these films represent the type of person worthy of love—usually white, heterosexual, able-bodied, skinny, gainfully employed, beautiful, and fashionable (or soon to be transformed into beautiful and fashionable). In adulthood, the friends I made were puzzled to learn about my fanaticism. They assumed I was smarter than that.
Still, I crave a good rom-com like a kid pressing her face against the window of a candy shop. When so much in this world is devastating, I want to lap up all the sweetness, even if it rots my brain. Because of my reputation, friends throw recommendations at me as if my taste is indiscriminate—as if I’m a goat who will consume anything you place before me. But because I’m a connoisseur, my standards are high, my criteria calibrated over decades of devotion.
To fall in love with a rom-com is to feel transported—to occupy a different life in a different place for a couple of sugarcoated hours. It is to feel the Tuscan sun on your face and to salivate over a slice of Mystic Pizza. It is to laugh out loud and to possibly even cry. It is to want what the leads seem to have found: an incontrovertible, enduring, kismet kind of love. It is also to hold up a mirror and ask: What kind of love story do I want for myself? Romantic love? Self love? Enduring friendship? The genre is “about building up the ideal, only to find that the ideal can’t be sustained and preferring what comes after the ideal is washed away,” says Alexandra Schwartz in a recent New Yorker conversation about what new films in the genre have to tell us about sex and love today. “That is what love at its best is, and that’s what rom-coms can give us.”
In recent years, I’ve been pleased with the ways this somewhat outdated genre (historically shaped by movie industry men) has thrown out old scripts to make room for new kinds of stories. What follows is a curated list, in no particular order, of some of the best rom-coms I’ve seen in recent years. I’ve chosen them because I think they are, on the whole, satisfying, with believable chemistry, atmospheric settings, and storylines or characters that challenge and expand the worn-out template of what a rom-com can be. Plus, none of them end with a wedding. (Sidenote: more than half were directed by women.)
Arguably, it might be a stretch to call some of the following titles “rom-coms” in the classic sense of the term, but I’ve included them because they are simply too good to go un-highlighted. If you’ve seen any of these, let me know if agree with my selection. If you have recommendations, I’d love to hear them.
Fire Island
For all the Pride and Prejudice fans out there, this fresh adaptation will hit the sweet spot between familiarity and originality. A group of friends spend a week in gay paradise, modern day Fire Island, where crushes are born, sexual tension builds, and first impressions must be dismantled through (gasp) male vulnerability. Fans of Las Culturistas may find satisfaction in the sweet and saucy antics of two supporting characters played by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers.
Long Weekend
There’s so much on-screen chemistry bottled up in this little-known film starring Zoë Chao and Finn Wittrock that it fizzes with cuteness. The premise relies on time travel, but I won’t reveal more than that to avoid giving away the gut-wrench twist of the ending.
The Broken Hearts Gallery
Geraldine Viswanathan steals the show in this hoarder-meets-antiquarian story about what happens when a jilted art enthusiast decides to turn her souvenirs from past relationships into a gallery. I was more charmed by the leading lady’s relationships with her girlfriends than I was with the heterosexual love story, but the ending offers a satisfying reframe of the “grand gesture” trope. My favorite element of the whole movie, though, is that the protagonist wears the same outfit multiple times. With that editorial choice, this film takes a stand against the myth of the infinity wardrobe.
The Happiest Season
Here’s my holiday rom-com pick. Kristen Stewart plays a smitten girlfriend to Mackenzie Davis’s character and devises a plan to ask her girlfriend’s father for his blessing to wed (which, Dan Levy’s character points out, seems old fashioned, but we need a plot, Dan!). The problem is, the girlfriend isn’t out yet to her conservative family, so when the two spend Christmas with said conservative family, it’s under the guise that Stewart’s character is an orphan who needs a home for the holidays (even though Stewart is an adult woman—but we need a plot, OK?). What follows is a funny, charming portrait of family dysfunction, and a series of increasingly cringe-worthy, jaw-clenching plot points that ratchet up the tension until the whole thing boils to a climax.
We Live in Time
I’m not usually a fan of an illness plot (spoiler alert: the female protagonist gets cancer), but the acting is stunning, which is no surprise since Academy award-nominated actors Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield play the leads. But the kicker for me is the way this movie explores how family life and romantic love can be at odds with female creative ambition.
Am I OK?
A buddy comedy with a romantic subplot, this film grapples with the vulnerable awkwardness of coming out in your thirties. Dakota Johnson plays a closeted gay girl who has a charming (if codependent) relationship with her female bestie, played by Sonoya Mizuno. As Johnson’s character stumbles into the unfamiliar world of girl crushes and queer dating, the mounting distance between the two gal pals begins to expose the frayed edges of their tightknit kinship.
My Old Ass
This is one of those special coming-of-age films that seems to occur as infrequently as leap years. Beautifully filmed in Muskoka, Ontario amid gleaming cranberry bogs and idyllic lake islands, the movie follows 18-year-old Elliott (played by Maisy Stella) one glittering summer when she happens to meet her 39-year-old self (played by Aubrey Plaza) during a mushroom trip. The film has it all: sun-drenched romance, emotional depth, a setting that transports, and an ending that may require Kleenex.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
The acting performances in this film took my breath away, and so much of this movie relies on the strength of the acting and the script, because most of the scenes are confined to a single hotel room. When the female lead (played by Emma Thompson) hires a male sex worker (played by Daryl McCormack) to her hotel room, she confesses that she has never had an orgasm and has taken a vow to never fake one again. What follows is a sweet, tender exploration of aging, body image, and connection beyond physical pleasure.
The Valet
The sympathetic lead (played by Eugenio Derbez) is a charming, if somewhat timid, parking valet who, after being the unfortunate victim of a bike accident, gets entangled in a scheme to pose as a starlet’s lover to cover up the celebrity’s affair with a married man. The relationship that buds between them is sweet and satisfyingly comedic.
Persuasion
Dakota Johnson plays Jane Austen’s easily persuadable Anne Elliot, who is convinced by her friends and family to break off her engagement to Captain Wentworth. Eight years later, the two meet again, giving Jane a second chance at love. Johnson’s cheeky asides to the camera lend this film a sly intimacy that makes Jane Austen fans feel they are part of an Austen inner circle. Plus, the coastal landscape porn creates a rugged, windswept world ripe for romance.
Somebody I Used to Know
Using a story arc suspiciously similar to My Best Friend’s Wedding, this film follows a workaholic Hollywood producer (played by Alison Brie) back home to Leavenworth, Washington after her reality TV series gets canceled. There, she reunites with her ex (played by Jay Ellis) who is engaged to marry a dreamy-eyed singer who reminds the lead of her idealistic younger self. Get ready for a Bavarian-themed montage complete with pretzels, sausage, and May pole dancing, along with a plot that asks: Was choosing career over love worth it?