The Best Break Up Movies Are Here When Your Misery Needs a Little Company
The Best Break Up Movies Are Here When Your Misery Needs a Little Company
When it comes to healing from a bad breakup, humans have a tendency to form a mental narrative surrounding the event. Whether that’s a reminaging or just erasure of the whole thing, it’s how we make do, and it’s often a pretty effective coping mechanism. However, when the wound is still fresh, it’s easy to have some emotional writer’s block while penning that redemption arc on your love life.Luckily, there are plenty of stories from the breakup canon to come before yours: hilarious, heart-warming, and tear-jerking.
So, if you’re still in the archetypal “lay in bed and binge on snacks” chapter of your breakup story, why not find some inspiration (and company) in a fellow forlorn lover flick? Even if you don’t plan to pull an Elle Woods and get a Harvard law degree to piss off your ex, watching her do it might restore some of your resilience. So, take it easy, let your heart heal, and, until you’re ready to peel yourself off the couch and reenter the world, throw yourself a moving-on movie marathon. These are the best breakup films of all time.
Girls Trip
Nothing says coping with an unfaithful spouse like taking a trip to New Orleans with your college best friends. And, when those friends are Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Tiffany Haddish? Well, it’s a whole lot easier to take your mind off of things.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is exactly as metaphysical and surreal as one would expect from a collaboration between Charlie Kaufman and a French music video director (the acclaimed Michael Gondry). Which is a perfect antidote for any bookish broken heart. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslett star in this drama as Joel and Clementine, an estranged couple who both undergo a procedure to forget one another. Just beware of the plot’s manic pixie dream girl trope.
Midsommar
So, this might not be the healthiest post-breakup watch … but it is a breakup movie. Well, kinda. More than anything, Ari Aster’s Midsommar is a horror movie if there ever was one. Florence Pugh stars as a psychology student in a failing relationship that is pushed to the brink when she and her boyfriend, along with their friends, land in a neopagan cult in rural Sweden.
Birds of Prey
It’s not easy to move on from a relationship with an ex like the Joker. When Harley Quinn splits from her longtime beau, she must form an entourage as her new form of protection around Gotham City. Contrary to what the title suggests, Harley quickly realizes that she and her flock don’t have as much to fear as she’d thought.
The Incredible Jessica Jones
Jessica Williams of 2 Dope Queens stars as Jessica James, an up-and-coming playwright in New York rebounding from a recent breakup. When a blind date matches her with Boone, who is also getting over his ex, the two become a support system for one another in their newly single lives. As one might expect, things get complicated.
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg star as the titular Celeste and Jesse: high school sweethearts turned spouses turned separated upon request of Celeste. The trouble with Celeste’s plans for divorce is that Jesse is still in love with her … and she might still be in love with him, too.
Casablanca
Nothing says making peace with your ex like helping her and her husband escape from incoming German forces during WWII. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman star in this Hollywood classic about the love of one’s country versus the love of your life.
Call Me By Your Name
The first cut is the deepest, especially when it’s a whirlwind summer romance with Armie Hammer in an idyllic rural Italian town. Timothe Chalamet plays Elio, a young man on the precipice of adulthood, in this painfully beautiful portrait of falling in love for the first time with another man. Michael Stuhlbarg’s fatherly guidance on love and loss, along with the ending twist, will have you gazing into your fireplace listening to Sufjan Stevens for the indefinite future.
The Break Up
She wanted a dozen damn lemons. What is so hard to process about that?
Step one: Order too much junk food. Step two: Eat it with something cathartic in the background.