Introverted, intelligent, and terribly without guile –– ad hoc survivalist skills notwithstanding –– the pair haven’t a chance of outsmarting their various pursuers, or have they?Ī surprisingly light-hearted fable from Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom is quirky almost to a fault, joyously off-center, and idiosyncratic in the best possible way. Having fled Camp Ivanhoe in order to be together against the wishes of virtually every adult in their sheltered lives. Two 12 year-olds, Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) are on the lam. Wes Anderson offers a sugary coming-of-age tale of forbidden love circa 1965 on the fictional isle of New Penzance, New England.
With a late 1970s setting, Québécois director Laurent Cantet tells the sordid story of three middle-aged white women played by Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, and Louise Portal, who have sexual tourism in mind as they travel to Haiti for kinky encounters with young men.Įqual parts touching and troublesome, Heading South doesn’t shy away at all from its taboo premise, and with a deft skill akin to Rainer Werner Fassbinder it unravels a political inequality with poise and grace. Periphery characters include Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), a sex offender pedophile, and obsessed ex-cop Larry (Noah Emmerich) in what the LA Times called “one of the few films …that examines the baffling combination of smugness, self-abnegation, ceremonial deference and status anxiety that characterizes middle-class Gen X parenting, and finds sheer, white-knuckled terror at its core.” A torrid affair erupts between Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), both stay-at-home parents who are married to other people. The Bard was no doubt a master, revisiting forbidden love repeatedly in his work, and here we’ve chosen to pass him over on purpose, to allow room for other ill-starred loves.ĭirector Todd Field takes a positively fearless approach to his examination of human desire and vexation with Little Children, which is based off of Tom Perrotta’s 2004 novel. Please note, with the exception of West Side Story on this list, the various Romeo and Juliet adaptations –– many of which are wonderful, don’t get us wrong –– and other Shakespearean works (including 1998’s Shakespeare in Love), have been deliberately omitted. The following list looks at the best examples of proscribed affection and clandestine love, where the stakes are high and a box of tissues are requisite. Who doesn’t like to get swept up in passion’s throes, often while defying convention and shattering taboos? Forbidden love is a tantalizing topic for cineastes, offering compelling melodrama, and escapist diversion with aplomb.