For most of the film industry’s history, LGBTQ stories were hidden away or relegated to cautionary tales or comic relief. If LGBTQ characters were featured in films, they were often just there to support the growth of the main character without the audience learning anything meaningful about them. That being so, the LGBTQ romance is a fairly new phenomenon in cinema but one that, thankfully, is flourishing. Recent movies made by and for gay people have stolen audiences' and critics' hearts, but there are so many more gay romance movies, many made before their time, that deserve a lot more play. This Pride Month, celebrate with some funny, beautiful, and sexy queer romance stories!
Editor's Note: This article was updated on June 18.
Desert Hearts (1985)
It is only in the past few years that this film has gotten a fraction of the attention and acclaim that it deserves. Desert Hearts begins in 1959 when a Columbia English professor, Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) arrives in Reno, Nevada to get a quickie divorce and suddenly sparks up a relationship with her landladies’ wild stepdaughter Cay (Patricia Charbonneau). It feels like an intimate classic from Old Hollywood, especially when you compare it to the Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable classic, The Misfits, which also follows a woman in need of a quick divorce in Reno. The combination of beautiful cinematic landscapes understated acting, and a brilliant soundtrack slowly creeps up on you until you are in love with these two beautiful women.
Carol (2015)
Todd Haynes is one of the most prolific gay directors working today and has shown himself to be a master of psychological drama, melodrama, and unconventional biopics. However, it wasn’t until 2015 that he showed he was capable of making a romance so tender that it would knock you onto your knees. Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, The Price of Salt, Carol tells the story of Therese (Rooney Mara), a young aspiring photographer in 1950s New York who falls for an older, married woman, Carol (Cate Blanchett). This mesmerizing movie makes your heart race in even the quietest scenes and gives a sense of optimism in an impossible love without being naive.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not just a great romance but a revolutionary one that asks its audience important questions. Celine Sciamma’s masterpiece begins at the end of the 18th century when painter Marianne (Noemie Merlant) arrives on the coast of Brittany to paint a wedding portrait of Heloise (Adele Haenel). The only catch is Heloise refuses to be painted or married, so she must paint in secret. What follows is a mysterious and seductive love story that not only captures our heart but our imagination. Sciamma forces us to question the idea of a muse and how to make equality sexy.
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
This coming-of-age story brings all the heartache and thrills of youth with an Italian flare. Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino follows Elio (Timothee Chalamet), a Jewish Italo-French teenager who, while living with his parents in Northern Italy, falls in love with a grad student named Oliver (Armie Hammer) who comes to stay. Written by the legendary James Ivory, the film contains tinges of his classic movies like A Room with a View or Maurice with its youthful appreciation of sexuality and nature but carries with it a sense of impending mortality and sensuality.
Happy Together (1997)
If there was one director to define the cinema of heartache and desire, it would be Wong Kar Wai. His films like In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express carry with them a deep longing for long-lost or unfulfilled love, but it’s his film Happy Together that reveals the hunger for intimacy that comes even when you are with the person you love. The film follows two gay Hong Kong men in Buenos Aires and their toxic on-again-off-again relationship. Wong Kar Wai brings a disastrous love story that we know can either end in tragedy or banality, but his actors are so beautiful and his cinematography so spellbinding, that we can’t help but watch.
Weekend (2011)
In Andrew Haigh’s second film, Weekend, he paints an absorbing and intimate portrait of the contradictory possibilities and impossibilities of short-lived one-night stands. The movie follows two gay men who drunkenly have sex one night expecting never to see each other again, but instead change each other's lives in just one weekend. More than many of the films on this list, this movie contains many philosophical conversations on not just love, but gay identity. By featuring one man still half in the closet and the other out and proud, we get a deeper sense of the anxieties and joys of being a gay man in this modern world.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
No other movie has been or will be as important as Brokeback Mountain in the history of gay representation in Hollywood. The movie, directed by Ang Lee, tells the story of two cowboys who meet in the summer of ‘63 for a shepherding job and soon develop an untamable desire for each other that will continue with them for the rest of their lives. At the time of its release, the film was hailed for the bravery of its actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, for “going gay” and most talks revolved around its sex scenes. Though the shock of these scenes has worn off, their tenderness and beauty have not.
Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)
The only film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival to have not only the director but its two lead actresses also win the Palme D’Or, Blue is the Warmest Color enthralled viewers across the globe. The film follows a French teenager, Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) who discovers her sexuality and love with the older painter, Emma (Lea Seydoux). These actresses guide us from a world of restless yearning to the darker side of a love built on the unequal ground so naturally, you might think you’re watching a documentary. Though the length of the sex scene often gets more notice, it is the vulnerability and honesty of the actresses that keep us watching.
My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
In one of Daniel Day Lewis’ first prominent roles, he explodes on the screen as a right-wing punk with a secret soft-hearted side in My Beautiful Laundrette. Set in London during the Thatcher years, the story focuses on Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a young Pakistani man who is reunited with his old friend and current right-wing gang member Johnny (Day-Lewis). The two become the caretaker and business manager of Omar’s uncle’s laundrette and start up a romantic relationship. It takes a great filmmaker to delve into the extremely personal motivations of two lovers while also critiquing society at large and Stephen Frears is just that director. Considered one of the best British films of all time, My Beautiful Laundrette stands in a class of its own.
BPM (2017)
BPM not only offers us a realistic portrait of a relationship from its beginning to its end, but it also reveals what it was like to be gay amid a pandemic no one wanted to fix. This award-winning film follows a group of ACT UP Paris activists in the 1990s fighting to get the awareness and medication they need. In the midst of all this, two gay men, one HIV positive and the other negative, fall for each other. Their love for each other mirrors the ups and downs of being an activist. At times their passion is infectious and energizing but their depression can make them fatalistic and leave them at a loss for solutions. For a romance that deals head-on with the biggest social issue the LGBTQ community has faced, this is the only choice.
A Fantastic Woman (2017)
In this Oscar-winning film, director Sebastian Lelio paints a portrait of grief that no one else could. A Fantastic Woman follows Marina, a young transgender woman living in Santiago, Chile, who works as a singer and a waitress. When her older boyfriend suddenly dies, she finds herself alone and under intense scrutiny from his family and society in general. Though it may not sound like a romantic film as her boyfriend is dead for most of its duration, Lelio shows us how grief is an equally important process in a relationship. With striking visuals and a star-turning performance from Daniela Vega, this movie will have you longing for a man you didn’t know and angry that no one can accept this love.
The Color Purple (1985)
If you saw this movie once years ago, you may disagree with this film’s place on this list as the gay scenes of the novel were heavily edited for this Steven Spielberg film. However, even without explicit scenes or declarations, this is one of the most compassionate love stories put on the screen. The Color Purple is an epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), an African American woman living in the South in the early 1900s. She faces abuse from her father and husband and is subsequently separated from her sister. The only solace she finds is with Shug, a showgirl, and her husband’s mistress. After years of Celie being in a constant state of tense angst, seeing her let someone in is enough to make you blush, even if we only get a kiss on the cheek!
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
In one of the first films to depict a kiss between two men, Sunday Bloody Sunday changed what an audience was allowed to see. This classic directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) centers around a free-spirited young bisexual artist (Murray Head) and his simultaneous relationships with a divorced recruitment consultant (Glenda Jackson) and a gay Jewish doctor (Peter Finch). Filmed only four years after Britain’s law against homosexuality was dismissed, Schlesinger revolutionized cinema by showing an aching love triangle with compassion and authenticity.
But I’m A Cheerleader (1999)
Though But I’m A Cheerleader did not get the critical acclaim it deserved upon its release, it has since gained cult status. This charming comedy follows Megan (Natasha Lyonne), a popular, suburban cheerleader who is blindsided when her friends and family stage an intervention for her homosexuality and subsequently send her to a gay conversion camp. What follows is a sweet, camp take on a very real problem that is topped off with a delightful romance between Megan and fellow camp friend Graham (Clea Duvall). As one of the first teen rom-coms that let young gay kids know they were not alone and that they did not have to suffer for their love, it should not be forgotten!