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February 19, 2004
onsider: You've just split with the heretofore-presumed love of your life, or the hot prospect from Thursday night never called back. You're alone, in pajamas, watching a flickering TV. What's on that flickering TV? Not fucking A Room With A View. You'd kill yourself. Instead, try High Fidelity or Annie Hall. Movies about breakups make the broken-up feel better, and keep the happily attached in their places. With that in mind, we provide this public service: a list of some of our favorite movie breakup scenes. — Carrie Hill Wilner
n°
Annie Hall
Aside from making it acceptable for women to skulk around in oversized men's Oxford shirts, this movie is the archetype for every romantic comedy you've ever seen. Except every romantic comedy isn't steeped in sullen passive-aggression. First line: "There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills resort and one of 'em says: 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other says, 'Yeah, I know, and such
small portions. Well, that's essentially how I feel about life." And for that, Woody, God bless you.
Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugale)
The fourth of the "Antoine Doinel" series sees little Antoine sporting long hair and some serious malaise. Essentially: he cheats on wife, wife leaves him (while in full geisha garb, naturally), he gets so bored with mistress that he repeatedly calls now-estranged wife during dinner to explain how bored he is, mistress gets tired of his repeated trips to phone booth to call now-estranged wife and stalks out. Then he kind of gets back with wife. But then, in the last movie, they break up for real, so this still counts.
Deep Blue Sea
You know when there's this girl, and there's all this sexy visceral tension and she's almost your girlfriend, and you're about to hook up with her and then she gets EATEN BY EXTRA-SMART SHARKS? Sucks to be you. Rated R for graphic shark attacks (seriously, they say that). Rated A for awesome.
Heathers
Christian Slater and Wynona Ryder in a car. U2's "Teenage Suicide" playing on the radio. Christian Slater shoots said radio. Wynona Ryder pauses briefly. Then: "That's it. We're breaking up." Perfection.
A Mighty Wind
We see Mitch and Mickey before and after, but not during, their breakup. We just hear them musing distantly about their charming romance, then, eventually, about how he was always sort of
strange. And how she, one day just started well
throwing things at him. It's kind of depressing and sweet how tenderness lingers between people who were once in love, even if one of them is a shuffling schizophrenic. Especially if one of them is a shuffling schizophrenic.
High Fidelity
When the cute sort-of-Swedish girl with the bangs ditches John Cusack (for, disgustingly enough, a man with a ponytail), he starts thinking about everyone he's ever loved and lost, including the sophisticated (but vapid) Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is, in her main scene, wearing the most singularly unattractive shirt I have ever seen. Pity. Wanna know the weird thing though? John Cusack looks EXACTLY like a guy I broke up with. And now he's the lead actor in a movie I've put in a list of best breakup movies. Meta.
Splendor in the Grass
He leaves her, and she ends up institutionalized. It's like all your histrionic pre-adolescent fantasies come to life, except you are Natalie Wood-and/or-Warren Beatty-hot. I am fragile, precious. Only once they have broken me, will they realize what I was. Maybe there will be suicide. There will certainly be adversarial adults. Also, there will be a slut. Most good movies have sluts.
Lolita
Like Audrey Hepburn and ice cream, this movie is one of those things that is universally overrated. But that scene, where Humbert Humbert finds out she's left the hospital with Quilty and goes in to that apoplectic rage? Oh my God. You don't know whether to vomit or masturbate, which is not a position you often find yourself in.
Wayne's World
"Wayne, if you're not careful, you're going to lose me." "I already lost you. Three moths ago! We BROKE UP!" Poor, crestfallen, gun-rack toting Stacey in her blue cotillion dress (and later, neck brace), the most hysterical depiction possible of the dumpee who just doesn't get it. If you think about it, kind of the counterpart to Humbert Humbert in the hospital scene. Not so much with the vomit-masturbate conflict, though.
Stromboli
All of these are great breakup movies, but one of them has a fucking VOLCANO. This is it. Ingrid Bergman, basically a green-card wife, hates her oppressive husband and the fishing village he's taken her to. She's driven to escape by climbing the treacherous volcano Stromboli, in an impressive feat of mountaineering and symbolism. Last shot, her staggering through dust, poisonous clouds swirling around her, a very ugly sort of freedom achieved. It was also during the filming of Stromboli that Ingrid Bergman left Petter Lindstrom for Roberto Rosselini. So I guess that also kind of makes it a breakup movie, too.
©2004 Nerve.com.
Commentarium (21 Comments)
Um, wtf is Deep Blue Sea doing on this list?
hey - just a small thing... "Teenage Suicide" is actually by Big Fun, not U2....great list though
"I don't even own a gun, let alone many guns which would neccesitate a gun rack"- probably the best line in Wayne's World.
Dude...forgot the best ever...Better Off Dead. Another John Cusasck, but when he was like 17.
stupes. "meta"? god. I weep.
How could you leave off "the way we were". Christ, Don't your remember the last scene.
A recent indy breakup flick with all the melancholy and hope of the slow, mutual split is "Parsley Days" by Canadian director Andrea Dorfman. A user on Internet Movie Database calls it "refreshingly anti-romantic yet warm". Couldn't say it better myself. Sad and sexy canoe scenes -- and you don't know Canada until you know about sex in canoes, so a breakup in a canoe is a good place to start.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0263840/
mmm, yea Im thinking Virgin Suicides would have been a nice 6 or 7. But these are Carrie's favorites... not those of the 22 year old guy. Loved Heathers.
When you mention the film Lolita, are you referring to the Stanley Kubrick version, or the 1998 version with Jeremy Irons? Both are good, but the 1998 version with Jeremy Irons drips with much more humanity.
I wondered the same thing, but I think the graphic is from the jeremy irons version.
Audrey Hepburn is overrated? Good God, no.
This is a really pathetic list of "best breakup movies." Terrible job!
Stromboli? Sharks? How long did it take you to write this, 10 minutes?
All great choices, though I do have to add one of my favorites - the spruned ex in Bluse Brothers
What about "Shoot the Moon"? Is it too grown-up for this list? It's heartbreaking in an adult way, and Diane Keaton
gets it on with the lovely Peter Weller.
God Carrie writes well.
what about swingers????????
and i just rented it.......if you know what i mean.
Interesting that Nerve doesn't answer the question in its own personals section about a favorite sex scene in the movies.
You missed one of the most insightful and truthful failed romance films of recent history, ALL THE REAL GIRLS (Sony Pictures Classics, 2001). While you may recognize yourself on screen at times, the film never slips into sentimentality or the cheese-filled verbosity of most films that deal with first romances. This film will massage your old wounds in a way that is both touching, funny, and haunting.
Have you ever seen the film Nothing to loose. This one beguins with Tim Robbins and his wife having a conversation.
She: You know, it is not your fault, ... what the heck, It IS your fault, and your father gives me better sex
and then Tim beguins to laugh. They are just playing a game that consist in pretending break ups
gracias a Dios por intiresny
Now you say something