With the release of Like Crazy this week, here is a list of some of our favourite, and not so favourite, long-distance relationships in film...
This week long-distance relationship weepy, Like Crazy, is finally being released in the UK but, with Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin) quickly climbing up the list of our favourite forbidden romances in film, we wondered what other long-distance relationships, good, bad or otherwise, have been committed to the screen? These particular star-crossed lovers were separated by distance, but there are many ways for a savvy writer to pull a couple apart. Here we look at some of the best and worst examples...
As you can see by the title, Going the Distance is probably the most on-the-nose example of long-distance love in the noughties. With the digital age, distance stopped being such a stringent barrier to budding romance, allowing Drew Barrymore and Justin Long to develop their relationship from New York to San Francisco. It didn't hurt that the actors had bags of chemistry on account of their off-screen coupling, but sadly its timeliness couldn't make up for a lacklustre execution.
Less obvious than some of our other choices, but it's probably the greatest love story of them all. Brokeback Mountain, the story of two cowboys (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal) finding solace in each other across decades of their otherwise separate lives, is as romantic and tragic as they come. Although based far away from each other and only meeting for the odd 'fishing' trip, the barrier between these two characters was not distance, but intolerance, as their longing for companionship ultimately clashed with their more conventional lives back home.
As with all Nicolas Sparks adaptations, Dear John was honest from the start about its teary chick-flick intentions. Never promising us great art, the resulting film is still a little hard to swallow despite promising performances from Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum. The film's framework, about a man who leaves new-found love to fight for his country, is clichéd and unappealing to anyone except the most hardened rom-com fan, but somehow it feels a little hollow in practice.
If those other couples thought they had it hard, they should have spoken to Demi Moore. Patrick Swayze plays her deceased husband, killed by a mugger at the start of the film, who continues to haunt his wife with the hopes of communicating with her. Ghost is a thoroughly romantic tale of lost love and grief, and its sincerity bleeds through the performances from Moore and Swayze, if not when Whoopi Goldberg arrives.
The Lake House has a slightly silly, hole-ridden plot. Its leads were only cast because of the novelty value of reuniting Keanu Reeves (who should never play the romantic lead) and Sandra Bullock for the first time since Speed. But it's still a lovely film for the wholly less cynical among us, and has the balls to separate the couple not just by time, or by place, but also by putting them in different dimensions (I think...?) The story may be convoluted, but sit back and enjoy the romance and you'll be fine.
So much of Sleepless in Seattle has been leeched for other films made after its early 90s release, even people who've never seen it know the plot inside out. Other long-distance romances often choose to play like straight dramas, but this film was released in the golden age of romantic-comedy, and informed the genre as we know it now. Even though they only briefly meet, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have enough chemistry to carry the film through its slightly dated schmaltz, and it's still a classic today.
When The Time Traveller's Wife was released in 2009, it passed by unnoticed and slightly unloved. Fans of the book were many, and those interested in time travelling romance had already tuned into Doctor Who's various stabs at the story, so there was little affection for a so-so film with complicated plotting and soppy characters. Sci-Fi fans dismissed it as a chick-flick, but not many of us romantics wanted to subject ourselves to an inevitably tragic ending, meaning it pleased only a fraction of its audience.
Before Sunrise is one of those magnificent films one discovers by accident when flicking through the movie channels or browsing the shelves of a closing-down DVD shop. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy play two strangers who meet on a train before spending a night together, knowing it will probably be the only one they'll get together. Not for nothing does the film have a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as, once seen, this duo of stories about lost love and 'the one that got away' almost always finds its way into the favourites list. Lovely.
Going the Distance (2010)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Dear John (2010)
Ghost (1990)
The Lake House (2006)
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
The Time Traveller's Wife (2009)
Before Sunrise (1995); Before Sunset (2004)
