If LGBTQ characters appeared in films, they were frequently only there to help the main character grow, with the audience understanding little about them. As a result, LGBTQ romance is a relatively new phenomena in film, but one that is thriving, luckily. New films made by and for LGBT people, such as Fire Island, have, on the other hand, captured the hearts of both audiences and critics. However, there are many more gay romance films that ought to be seen, many of which were released before their time. Enjoy some sweet, innocent, gorgeous, and sexy LGBT romance stories during this Pride Month.
1. The Colour Purple (1985)
Director- Steven Spielberg
Celie is an African-American lady living in the South who endures great brutality and racism. She is the protagonist of this epic story that spans forty years. Things proceed from bad to worse once Celie’s cruel father marries her off to the equally degrading “Mister” Albert Johnson. As a result, leaving Celie to seek companionship wherever she can. She persists in pursuing her ambition of one day reuniting with her African sister. Alice Walker’s novel was the inspiration for this film.
2. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Director- John Schlesinger
Daniel Hirsh is a Jewish doctor, and Alex Greville is a middle-aged woman. They are both having affairs with the same male artist, Bob Elkin. Hirsh and Greville are not only aware that Elkin is seeing each other, but they also know each other. Despite this, they are willing to put up with the circumstance since they do not want to lose Elkin, who easily changes between them. In just two generations, people’s perceptions toward relationships and each other have changed dramatically, according to Schlesinger’s film.
3. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Director- Stephen Frears
Nasser Hussein, an immigrant from Karachi, Pakistan, enjoys a comfortable life in London, England. Along with his wife Bilquis and three kids, one of them is named Tania. He and his friend Salim own and operate two businesses: a garage and ‘Churchill’s Laundrette’. Nasser meets with his widower and drunken brother. He initially asks him to wash vehicles when he gets ask to hire his son, Omar. He then brings him to the laundromat and asks him to mop the floors. But he decides to delegate the task to Omar in the hopes of marrying him to Tania. Nasser is unaware that the laundrette would soon take on a new look and be renamed ‘Powders,’ and that the Husseins’ lives will never be the same.
4. Happy Together (1997)
Director- Wong Kar-Wai
Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing arrive in Argentina from Hong Kong and immediately set off on a road trip. Something isn’t right, and their relationship is in jeopardy. To gather money for his return home, a disillusioned Yiu-Fai begins working at a tango club. Yiu-Fai feels sympathetic when a battered and damaged Po-Wing emerges, but he is unable to establish a more intimate connection. Po-Wing, after all, isn’t quite ready to settle down. Yiu-Fai now works in a Chinese restaurant and meets Chang, a young Taiwanese man. In contrast, Yiu-life Fai’s takes on a new twist, while Po-life Wing’s continues to disintegrate.
5. Desert Hearts (1985)
Director- Donna Deitch
Professor Vivian Bell arrives in 1950s Nevada to get a speedy divorce. She’s unhappy in her marriage and feels out of place at the ranch where she stays. So she’s drawn to Cay Rivers, a confident and outspoken lesbian and the ranchowner’s daughter. Vivian’s anxieties about her love for Cay, as well as the emotions released by their growing intimacy, are set against a backdrop of rocky terrain and country and western music.
5. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Director- And Lee
Two young men are hired as ranch labourers in the Wyoming Rockies in 1963. During their lengthy months of isolation, they form an odd link that they are only faintly aware of until one night when it comes to the surface in a passionate encounter. They split ways at the end of the season, only to understand the actual depth of their feelings. Thus begins a decades-long relationship that the two of them desperately strive to keep hidden from the rest of the world. One that will be both lovely and tragic at the same time.
6. Carol (2015)
Director- Todd Haynes
It’s Christmastime in New York, and it’s 1952. Working in a department store in Manhattan, young Therese Belivet, an aspiring photographer, crosses encounters with Carol Aird, an elegant mother-of-one who is going through a tough divorce. Undisguised attraction grows into intense affection as Carol and Therese engage on a forbidden affair despite all odds, set against the backdrop of magnificent New York’s frigid winter and rigorous social rules. Carol and Therese, on the other hand, are well aware that they are playing with fire in their all-or-nothing game of desire.
7. Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013)
Director- Abdellatif Kechiche
Adèle, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl on the threshold of adulthood, can only envision the delicate touch, the strange, yet lingeringly fervid feeling of longing, and the vehement outpouring of emotions of her first teenage love. After a sloppy sexual experience, Adèle has become increasingly disinterested in her male peers, preferring instead to be enamoured with the seductive and intriguingly mysterious blue-haired woman she meets on the street. Emma, the bohemian stranger, will inevitably appear in Adèle’s dreams, haunting her deep and wild late-night fantasies; nonetheless, their teenage friendship will give way to a difficult, yet impassioned romance before long. Growing up is undoubtedly difficult, and love, like life, can be painful.
8. Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Director- Luca Guadagnino
In the early 1980s, seventeen-year-old Elio spends his vacation in his family’s summer villa in northern Italy, amidst the lush Mediterranean landscapes of a tranquil and golden summer. Apart from his father, Mr Perlman, a professor of Greco-Roman culture, and his translator mother, Annella, Oliver, a twenty-four-year-old American PhD student, works there as an intern. Now, against the backdrop of perpetual summer boredom, a tentative relationship between Elio and Oliver will create the basis for an unforeseen bond, as the uncharted emotions of first love begin to boil over over the course of six transitory weeks.
9. A Fantastic Woman (2017)
Director- Sebastián Lelio
Orlando, a friendly and well-off textile company owner, locks eyes with Marina, a hopeful singer and the roughly half-his-age love of his life, somewhere in Santiago in a dimly lit nightclub. Unfortunately, Orlando becomes critically ill after Marina’s birthday celebration and a night of passion, and he dies in hospital the next morning. Marina will quickly realise that her involvement in Orlando’s death, their unique connection, and, most importantly, her right to grieve her beloved deceased will all be called into question as a result of her companion’s untimely demise.
10. Weekend (2011)
Director- Andrew Haigh
Russell goes to a homosexual club alone and on the pull on a Friday night after a wild house party with his straight friends. He picks up Glen just before closing time, but what was supposed to be a one-night encounter turns into something more, something special. The two men get to know each other over the course of the weekend, in pubs and bedrooms, getting drunk and using drugs, telling stories and having sex. It’s a fleeting experience that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Weekend is a film about the universal battle for a genuine existence in all of its manifestations, as well as an honest and unabashed love story between two people. It’s about the search for one’s own identity and the significance of committing to one’s life with zeal.
11. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019)
Director- Céline Sciamma
Marianne is hired to paint Hélose, a young woman who has recently left the convent, for her wedding portrait in 1760 France. Marianne arrives under the idea of companionship to observe Hélose during the day and surreptitiously paint her by firelight at night because she is a reluctant bride-to-be. Attraction and intimacy emerge between the two ladies as they experience Hélose’s first moments of freedom. Hélose’s portrait quickly becomes a collaborative expression of affection and a monument to their relationship.
