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We might be in the age of mind-boggling spectacle and roaring heroes but sometimes all you crave is a good ole romantic movie. The recent years have given us delicious twists to the usual boy-meets-girl-love-happens template, peppering the genre with raw portraits of marriage, the anxiety of dating and broadening our understanding of the big, all-encompassing emotion that is love. These Amazon Prime Video movies have all of that and more. Here is a list of our favourite love stories on the OTT platform:
What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than indulge in a classic Bollywood romantic movie? Twenty-eight years later, with the exception of a few necessary flaws pointed out, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge still exudes charm. Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) and Simran (Kajol) swaying in a sarson ka khet while the familiar strains of “Tujhe Dekha Toh Yeh Jaana Sanam” play in the background is enough to give anyone a healthy dose of mushy nostalgia.
This Rani Mukerji-Vivek Oberoi-starrer revolves around the blues of young love. Suhani and Aditya fall in love and elope when it’s clear that their parents don’t approve of their union. Life is pretty “Aye Udi Udi Udi” for a while but misunderstandings begin blooming. There are fights, accusations of affairs and even a car accident. But because this is early 2000s Hindi cinema, Saathiya gets a happy ending.
Late director Pradeep Sarkar’s debut film introduced Vidya Balan to the world, bringing her on-screen as the sensual and melancholic Lalita. Lalita is the love of Shekhar’s (Saif Ali Khan) life but Sarkar opens the film with the festivities of Shekhar’s marriage with someone else. We travel backwards, tracing both the inevitable and passionate love story between Lalita and Shekhar and the circumstances that pull them apart. Like many of Sarkar’s projects, Parineeta is a beautifully shot film.
Is a list of filmy love stories ever complete without Imtiaz Ali’s era-defining Jab We Met? The film, which recently pulled crowds to theatres owing to its re-release on Valentine’s Day, remains one of the most loved romantic comedies in Hindi cinema. If you’re looking for a trip down nostalgia lane, Kareena Kapoor’s Bhantinda ki Sikhni and Shahid Kapoor’s Angry Young Man are great companions. The songs, the costumes and the memorable dialogue are just the cherry on top.
Apart from the fact that this film gifted the world Ranveer Singh, Band Baaja Baarat has all the charm of a Hindi romantic comedy done right – a genre we haven’t seen enough of over the last decade. Singh plays Bittoo Sharma, an aimless college graduate who, in a bid to escape farming in his father’s ganne ke khet, joins the entrepreneurial Shruti Kakkad (Anushka Sharma) for her wedding planning business. Initially unconvinced to take him on, Shruti eventually learns to respect his resourcefulness and integrity and together, the two begin their meteoric rise. But despite Shruti’s cardinal rule of never mixing business with pleasure, a night of drunken celebration leads to just that – and nothing is the same. Singh makes a memorable debut while Sharma commands every frame she’s in.
Before Marriage Story, there was Blue Valentine. An unflinching look at the reality of a long-term marriage straining under the weight of Life, the film can seem both tragic and beautiful in what it reveals. We get enough glimpses of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy’s (Michelle Willaims) heartwarming past to root for them, but it doesn’t erase the rotting question that hangs over the film: Is love enough? Is it enough when the regret of sacrificed ambitions fester and your beloved stands before you in the cold, hard day of light? If you are tired of the romantic escapades and need something real, Blue Valentine is for you.
Jamie (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) employs his devious charm to draw female attention and do well in his job of pharmaceutical sales. He’s on a professional rise when he meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway) – vivacious, alluring and a patient of Parkinson’s Disease. Their time together takes them by surprise, each baffled at how quickly they seemed to be falling for each other. But the illness slowly begins to change Maggie and their relationship, ushering in themes of sacrifice, companionship and, of course, true love.
Two long-time friends decide to become sex buddies with no strings attached – what could possibly go wrong? No Strings Attached might have come out more than a decade ago but remains watchable for its insight into human anxiety and insecurity around emotional attachment – perhaps most relevant to our perennially-shifting dating dynamics today. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman pack some great chemistry as the lead pair and look out for Greta Gerwig and Jake Johnson's wonderful supporting roles.
Pat (Bradley Cooper), recently released from a mental health facility after undergoing treatment for bipolar disorder, has only one goal: Get his wife, Nikki, back. The glorious spanner in his works arrives in the form of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), also struggling with a mental illness. The two immediately hit it off, discussing the various drugs they had dabbled in to deal with their illnesses. When Tiffany offers to help Pat write a letter to his wife in exchange for participating in a dance competition, both are unaware of how close they are about to become. Original, empathetic and darkly humorous, Silver Linings Playbook shakes up the romance genre in a pleasantly rude manner.
With shades of Romeo and Juliet in its narrative, Ishaqzaade revolves around the rival families of Chauhans and Qureshis. Parma (Arjun Kapoor) of the Chauhan clan and Zoya (Parineeti Chopra) of the Qureshi clan seem like a perfect match: they’re both hot-tempered, trigger-happy and have a streak of dangerous rebellion running through them. When the two fall in love, it makes sense. But a farce soon comes to the fore, changing each of them in irrevocable ways. If you love grand and tragic love stories, this one is for you.
Hasee Toh Phasee introduces love not only through everything love should be but also through everything that it shouldn’t. Honey-eyed and diffident, Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra) believes Karishma is right for him – she’s pretty, ambitious and more than makes up for the confidence he lacks. But when her sister Meeta (Parineeti Chopra) aka the black sheep of the family, shows up, he is slowly but surely bowled over by her unconventional charm. Hasee Toh Phasee does what most good romances do – it uses a love story to bring its characters into their own as people.
Sharat Katariya’s Dum Laga Ke Haisha was one of Hindi cinema’s first steps into the “small-town film” – a phenomenon that would maintain its chokehold over Bollywood well after it had been squeezed dry of all novelty. But when Kataria’s film first released it was refreshing for many reasons apart from inhabiting a suburban universe: It is the 1990s and 10th-fail Prem Prakash Tiwari (Ayushmann Khurrana) is set to marry the educated but overweight Sandhya Verma (Bhumi Pednekar, in her debut role). To add to Prem’s intense shame about his wife’s weight is the local “Wife Carrying Championship” – a tournament where the man completes a series of tasks while carrying his wife on his back. When forced to participate by his mother, Prem discovers a new side to his seemingly unattractive wife.
Ritesh Batra’s Photograph is arguably much more than a love story, dancing around the ambiguities of a hard-to-define relationship between two strangers. Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), an uneducated Muslim man working as a photographer at the Gateway of India is dealing with a dilemma: His grandmother has stopped eating because he hasn’t found a bride. To placate her, he sends her the picture he clicked of a beautiful stranger at the Gateway. Delighted, his grandmother decides to visit him, leading him to seek out the woman in the photograph. Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) is different from him in every way but she agrees to keep up the farce, leading to a contemplative relationship between the two.
Hanu Raghavapudi’s Sita Ramam has an intriguing premise. Orphaned Lieutenant Ram (Dulquer Salmaan), due to an act of courage at the border, suddenly finds himself raised to the pedestal of a national hero. Letters from all over the country flood in, each claiming to be his mother or sister – a token of support from his motherland. But one letter, from a certain Sita Mahalakshmi (Mrunal Thakur), claims that she’s his wife. Are they in love? Are they married? Years later, Afreen (Rashmika Mandanna), a Pakistani student with a deep hatred for India, is forced to find answers. As she digs into the history of these two people, a touching romance unfolds through flashbacks, filled with train rides and long gazes. And through them, Afreen finds herself changing.
Directed by Dave Franco and co-written with actor (and his wife) Alison Brie, the series can seem predictable in the beginning. Ally (Brie) reconnects with an ex-boyfriend, Shaun (Jay Ellis) on her trip back home. The two have a great time until she discovers that he gets married the same week. But here’s where the show takes a path less trodden – Ally sticks around, discovering new facets of not only her relationship with Shaun but also her budding friendship with Shaun’s fiancee, Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons). The show truly tests the audience’s loyalty with its dedication to showing chemistry between each character.