One might say love is unlimited and is not constrained by time, race, religion and sex. However, although love does maintain its own freedom, the incarnations of love can be different and almost all of them have been on display in the movies.
Among the various incarnations of love in the movies, the kind that is between same-sex lovers can be quite special. Their journeys of love are definitely worth a closer look for it is similar but also different.
The movies below are actually five love stories between sex-same couples. Along with the changing times, their stories seem quite different in terms of the broader social situations, personal struggles and the endings.
Total Eclipse — Love is fire; ignites also destroys
The story takes place in France in 1871. Young, wild Arthur Rimbaud came to Paris to visit preeminent poet Paul Verlaine. The two genius fall into a passionate love that ignites and inspires them. Verlaine abandons his pregnant wife and goes on an self-destroying journey with Rimbaud.
Maurice — A choice between love and everything else
Maurice is an award-winning English movie based on E. M. Forster‘s novel and also his real life experience. It’s about two Cambridge students falling in love with each other. However, in the Edwardian age, being together with someone of the same sex is not only forbidden but also a crime written in the law. It’s a choice between love and everything else.
Brokeback Mountain — I wish I knew how to quit you
It is the summer of 1963 in the high grassland of Wyoming. Two cowboys form a friendship that turns into a forbidden love and life-long secret. The Brokeback mountain is somewhere that we can never return but keep in the deepest and softest place of our heart.
Happy Together — Sex is irrelevant and circle of love
Ho Po-Wing is charming, self-conceited and manipulative, while Lai Yiu-fai is stable and generous. The two men go to Argentina to renew their ailing relationship however it might be a circle of abuse and destruction. Happy Together is one of Wang Kar-wei‘s best films, set in pre-handover Hong kong and Argentina.
Blue is the warmest color — You are my river running high, run deep, run wide
Blue is a coming-of-age and love-at-first-sight story set in 2010s in France. Through the life of Adele and Emma, it depicts an passionate, poignant and heartbroken love story with magnificent filmic language. Although the movie also shows the pressure from outside world on their relationship, it’s more about two persons’ inner feelings of falling in love and then departed.
(Photo on the homepage: Independantman/Flickr)
