The plot for traditionalromancefeatures is pretty easy to spot if you know where to look. That’s because, to be considered a romance, a film typically has two distinct and vital elements - a central love story and an optimistic ending. So, what happens when an otherwise romantic movietakes a wide left turnin the opposite direction? There are plenty of doomed romances like Titanic or Romeo and Juliet, yet audiences expect those movies to end that way.
What happens when a romance ends in an unexpected way and subverts expectations? Romantic films that, on the surface, look like they could have a happy ending but instead pivot. Or ones that end not with a happily ever after but instead on a more somber reflective note. Here is a list of romance movie endings whose story didn’t go as planned. Spoilers ahead.
Update June 10, 2025: This article has been updated by Amanda Minchin with more romantic films that ended in unexpected ways.
12Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Only Lovers Left Alive
Only Lovers Left Aliveis a realistic retelling of a vampire couple set against the backdrop of Tangier. Rather than being overly gimmicky, this obscure vampire film deals with thetheme of vampiresfrom a realistic point of view. Despondent to their core, Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) live separate lives across continents, surviving on “the Good Stuff”, untainted and mostly ethically sourced blood. A musician and creator at heart, Adam is forced into hiding to survive while surrounded by his creations. Sensing Adam is unwell, Eve visits Adam in his Detroit apartment, where together they contemplate the life they’ve led and what the future may hold.
Why The Ending Was So Unexpected
Directed by musician-turned-filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, the film is stylistic, moody, and free-flowing, with no real direction in terms of the story. Rather, the film presents itself as a mood piece, gradually unfolding sensually. Unlike conventional romantic films that generally end on a happy note,Only Lovers Left Aliveends on a melancholic note. After being forced to vacate Adam’s apartment, the two move back to Tangier, where they are forced to once again hunt humans for survival. This eerie symbolism of them giving up on their values when being pushed into a corner is a more telling ending than any happily ever after.Stream on Paramount+
11Burning (2018)
Burningstars Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun, and Jeon Jong-seo. This film is more psychological thriller than romantic, though it does have romantic leanings in the form of the childhood romance between Hae-mi (Jeon) and Jong-su (Yoo), and the triangle that ensues after Hae-mi meets a young man named Ben (Yeun) after being stranded in Nairobi. Hae-mi’s sudden disappearance is littered with signs of Ben’s misdeeds. Directed bythe legendary Lee Chang-dong, the film’s genre is hotly debated and contested. Some view it as a murder mystery, while others view it as a commentary on classism. A common thread throughout the film is an eerie, borderline obsessive sense of romanticism.
Burningis one of the few films that leaves the viewer confused, unsettled, and yearning for more by the end of the film. What makesBurningstand out from other romantic films is its narrative identity and its climax. After finding evidence that Ben did in fact have something to do with Hai-me’s disappearance, Jong-su lures him into a trap to silence him forever.
This film is quite suggestive in nature as to who killed who but leaves the characters and their intentions fairly open to interpretation. This causes more chaos, which overall makes the film even more disturbing to watch.Burningdoesn’t explore romance for the sake of romance; it rather positions it against the cultural climate of social commentary.Stream on Netflix
10La La Land (2016)
La La Land
Released in 2016,La La Landwas a big awards contender that also turned into a mainstream blockbuster hit. The movie starred Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as two LA residents. He is a jazz musician while she is an aspiring actress, and after a few encounters, the two embark on a romance filled with love, passion, and jazz. Yet time and reality eventually pull them apart from one another. When Stone’s character Mia finally achieves her goal of becoming an actress in a major motion picture, the two lovers are left to part ways with a five-year time jump,revealing they never got back togetherand embarked on their own lives, yet they see each other once more at Gosling’s character Sebastian’s jazz club, and audiences are given a hint at what might have been if they stayed together.
Due to the bright technicolor spectacles and the romantic nature ofLa La Land’s marketing, many people likely expected the movie to end with a traditional musical romance. YetLa La Landends on a much more somber note, one that is more reflective. These are two people who did and still do love each other, but life had other plans for them, and they had to follow their own paths. The film’s final breathtaking musical fantasy showcases how a traditional Hollywood musical would have played out, with the two getting their happy ending. YetLa La Landends with loving but bittersweet people who share a lot of history together but no longer a future.Rent on Prime Video, Vudu, AppleTV+, or Google Play.
9In The Mood For Love (2000)
Considered by many to be one ofthe best romantic filmsof this generation,In the Mood for Loveis the tale of two neighbors (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who fall in love after discovering that their respective spouses are having an affair. Writer-director-producer Wong Kar-wai avoids his usual stylistic tendency to explore disparate characters crisscrossing each other and rather focuses on the relationship between two characters.
The beauty of the film lies in its genius to paint a picture of love and infidelity without ever revealing the respective spouses of the two individuals. This subconsciously has the two characters double up as their spouses, an homage to “Tête-Bêche”, which is a philatelic term referring to a pair of postage stamps, one inverted in relation to the other. Towards the end of the film, the couple is posed with a pertinent question: should they become the kind of people they found their spouses to be, or should they just walk away with a heavy heart? It is here that it seems the pair was doomed from the start. What ensues is a series of missed connections that follow them for years to come.Stream on Max
8A Love Song (2022)
A Love Songfeatures an unusual story and an unusual cast for a traditional romance. Dale Dickey plays Faye, a widowed woman waiting at a campsite for her childhood love, Lito (Wees Studi). As she waits for Lito to arrive, she strikes up conversations with the other campers, including a group of siblings looking to relocate their late father’s burial site and an engaged lesbian couple suffering from cold feet. When Lito finally arrives, they’re forced to decide whether to take their relationship to the next step. After a day spent playing music and reminiscing about their deceased partners, the pair spend the night together. The next morning, Lito sets out to pick her some flowers, only to dissolve into tears.
There is a beautiful sense of bookends to the plot of this film. While the two main characters unfortunately decide not to get together in the end, there is still a sense of love being about shooting your shot. Upon reuniting with her fellow campers, Faye is finally able to answer the question posed to her by the young couple concerned about getting married. Having asked her earlier whether the marriage was worth it, Faye is now finally able to answer them with a resounding yes.A Love Songends not with two people reconnecting and driving off together to spend their remaining years together but with one woman having finally found the answer she was looking for and going back out on her own.Stream on Paramount+
7Vortex (2021)
Having directed films likeLove, Enter The Void,and Climax,Gaspar Noe’s work has a divided fanbase, for sure. But no one can deny the filmmaker’s unabashed drive for authenVticity. With his previous work majorly touching upon themes such as young love and drugs, Noe shifts direction in his most recent work of art,Vortex.The film revolves around the life of an old couple, one living with a heart condition and the other with dimension. The screen literally splits in two as they grow further and further apart.Vortexis eerily close to Gaspar Noe’s heart as his mothersuffered from dementia.
Originally presented as a love story, the film takes the viewer through themes of various human traits that can plague a relationship. Towards the end of the film, the father dies, leaving the mother to wander the halls for him before she too succumbs in her sleep. The film ends with the house slowly being emptied of any semblance of them. In doing so, the ending is both a realistic portrayal of a relationship’s ups and downs as it nears a fitful end.Stream on Prime Video
6Paterson (2016)
Exploring the daily routine of a husband, an employee, and a closet poet,Patersonis a love letter to the everyday artists of the world. Directed by Jim Jarmusch,the film stars Adam Driver as Patersonand Golshifteh Farahani as his wife Laura. Disregarding the norm of romantic films that are larger than life,Patersonis a soft, gentle story about love that’s present in everyday things. The film revolves around a week in the life of a bus driver and his relationship with his wife. Writing poetry in between stops, his wife encourages him to do something more with his work.
If films likeTitanicandThe Notebookare overbearing declarations of love,Patersonis a gentler celebration of the sweetness that everyday love can bring. Towards the end of the film, Laura and Paterson return home to find his one and only notebook torn to shreds by their dog, Marvin. Dejected, Paterson goes to his favorite spot to contemplate - The Great Falls of the Passaic River. There, we see a stranger gift Paterson a new notebook, as if he knows he’s a poet. Paterson denies this but still accepts the notebook and writes a poem in it. The ending is sweet and simple and certainly satisfying.Stream on Prime Video
Related:These are Jim Jarmusch’s Best Films, Ranked
Phantom Thread
Paul Thomas Anderson’sPhantom Threadwas his first film to shoot outside of the US. In it, long-time collaborator Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Reynolds Woodcock, a fashion designer to the stars of the 1950s. Woodcock is a man of meticulous routines, obsessive and controlling to the nth degree. He meets his future wife and muse, Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps), not at some society function but as a waitress at a restaurant near his summer home. The two soon hit it off and get hitched. It’s only then that Alma discovers the depths of Woodcock’s obsessive compulsions and the lengths she is willing to go to to ensure their relationship thrives… even if that means poisoning him with mushrooms to take him down a peg or three.
One might not usually associate poisoning one’s spouse with a romantic film, considering it is indeed a criminal act, both then and now. So when Alma is forced to once again dose her husband after their bickering once again reignites, she tells him that his illness has been her doing. His response is to willingly take another bite of omelet, telling her to kiss him quickly before he vomits. They’re an odd couple, to be sure, but one that oddly balances each other out, albeit in an, at times, felonious way. Nobody who went in to seePhantom Threadlikely expected the movie to take the turn it did.Stream on Netflix
4Fallen Angels (1995)
Wong Kar Wai’sFallen Angelsis often remembered for its stylistic, neon-glow lights and wacky soundtracks from Massive Attack and The Flying Pickets. But the truth is, it’s a love story at its heart. The story revolves around two relationships - a Hitman and his Partner and that same partner with a convict on the run. Rarely in the same room at the same time, the Hitman’s Partner’s borderline stalker relationship with the Hitman leads to his eventual murder at her hands. After refusing to get too close to another in business, she meets a convict on the run and agrees to help him. In the film,Wong Kar Wai paints a portraitof life in a metro, using his characters as subjects and the fabric of their lives as source material.
Fallen Angelsis a surreal film that doesn’t place much emphasis on a narrative; rather, it just stays with the characters and observes how they make sense of the boiler room of a metro they’ve been placed in. If films were people,Fallen Angelswould be the distraught lover who gets his fingers burnt in love. The film ends with the death of the assassin, orchestrated by the hands of the woman he was in business with, whom he allegedly loved. The ending sees the escaped convict riding off into the sunset with the Hitman’s Partner. An obvious connection has been forged, though perhaps not a romantic one.Stream on Max
Related:The Best Assassins in Movies, Ranked
3Worst Person in the World (2021)
Joachim Trier’s standout film of 2021,The Worst Person in the World,is a case study insidethe minds of young adults. The film explores themes such as angst, identity, and affection through the eyes of Julie, a young woman making her transition into adulthood. Indecisive and impulsive, Julie (Renate Reinsve) skips between careers and men. In a relationship with Askel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a comic book artist, she finds herself on a one-night stand (though technically not cheating) with Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). After breaking up with Askel to be with Eivind, she learns that not only is she pregnant, but that Askel is dying of cancer. Torn between two potential worlds, she must decide which path is best for her future.
There’s a wonderful play on stopping time that only serves to highlight Julie’s potential decisions. Trier masterfully highlights the changes in Julie’s personality and outlook on life as she goes from one relationship to the other, reserving the most important realization till the climax of the film. After choosing to keep the baby, Julie unfortunately suffers a miscarriage. Soon after, we see neither of the men in her life as she is on set as a successful photographer. It is here that she runs into Eivind once more as he visits a model on set with their child.
The film’s end is bittersweet, with a close-up of Julie pondering over what life could’ve been had she not chosen this course. This pause, this reflection, clearly underlines the theme of the film: the most important relationship one has is with oneself. She had the right to make these decisions for herself, and she did just that.Stream on Hulu
