Best Italian romance movies

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

Virgil Oldman is a world renowned antiques expert and auctioneer. An eccentric genius, he leads a solitary life, going to extreme lengths to keep his distance from the messiness of human relationships. When appointed by the beautiful but emotionally damaged Claire to oversee the valuation and sale of her family’s priceless art collection, Virgil allows himself to form an attachment to her – and soon he is engulfed by a passion which will rock his bland existence to the core.

The Queen of Selvascura risks everything to be a mother; the King of Roccaforte falls in love with the voice of a mysterious girl; the King of Altomonte becomes obsessed with a flea and neglects his daughter.

A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.

An American couple, Paul and Marianne, spend their vacation in Italy and experience trouble when Marianne invites a former lover and his teenage daughter to visit, which leads to jealousy and dangerous sexual scenarios.

Adopted together after a tough childhood in an orphanage, Nica and Rigel realize that unexpected but irresistible feelings pull them together.

300 years of a remarkable musical instrument. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin has traveled through Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake. In Montreal, Samuel L Jackson plays an appraiser going over its complex history.

Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.

Claudia and Anna join Anna's lover, Sandro, on a boat trip to a remote volcanic island. When Anna goes missing, a search is launched. In the meantime, Sandro and Claudia become involved in a romance despite Anna's disappearance, though the relationship suffers from guilt and tension.

A runaway couple go on an unforgettable journey from Boston to Key West, recapturing their passion for life and their love for each other on a road trip that provides revelation and surprise right up to the very end.

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.

While scouting out apartments in London for her Venetian boyfriend, Carla rents an apartment overlooking the Thames. There, she meets a real estate agent by the name of Moira.

Emma has left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.

While Arturo tries to gain the love of Flora, he witnesses the history of Sicily from 1969 to 1992, miraculously dodging the crimes of the Mafia and supporting as a journalist the heroic struggle of the judges and policemen who fought this infamous organization.

The lovely Hermia is to wed Demetrius, but she truly cares for Lysander. Hermia's friend, Helena, is in love with Demetrius, while other romantic entanglements abound in the woods, with married fairy rulers Titania and Oberon toying with various lovers and each other.

When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.

This romantic drama by Michelangelo Antonioni follows the love life of Vittoria, a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.

Two neighbours — a persecuted journalist and a resigned housewife — forge a strong bond on the day of Adolf Hitler's historic 1938 visit to Rome.

Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz ("El Cid" to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain.

Full-throttle melodrama about an ill-starred romance set against the backdrop of the siege of Sarajevo. A mother brings her teenage son to Sarajevo, where his father died in the Bosnian conflict years ago.

The tale of an individualist proletarian in a time marked by the rise of mass political movements. In early 20th-century Italy, illiterate sailor Martin Eden seeks fame as a writer while torn between the love of a bourgeois girl and allegiance to his social class.

Tommaso is the youngest son of the Cantones, a large, traditional southern Italian family operating a pasta-making business since the 1960s. On a trip home from Rome, where he studies literature and lives with his boyfriend, Tommaso decides to tell his parents the truth about himself. But when he is finally ready to come out in front of the entire family, his older brother Antonio ruins his plans.

In 1970s Rome, a casual encounter between Enea and Pietro at a movie theater turns into an unforgettable romance — until destiny pulls them apart.

Drowning in debt, two brothers concoct a plan to scam a wealthy heiress and save their home in Naples — but unexpected love soon complicates the scheme.

Dante accidentally kisses Alice and they get engaged. After a surprise party for his 40th birthday, he wakes up a year later, not remembering what happened. Not only does he discover that Alice is pregnant... He feels time is passing too quickly and he starts forgetting some of the most important moments of his life.

At a college in Rome, a professor, nicknamed "Dodo" is in a deep depression. His stunningly beautiful wife has just left him for another man. Dodo wants her back very badly and has erotic daydreams about her. A beautiful young student in his class asks him for a ride home and seduces the lucky man, but still he wonders about his wife and her lover.

This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.

In 1950s northern Italy, a woman tests her fiancé's love and passion by trying to break his commitment to premarital chastity.

Marta may be an orphan, and she may be affected by a lethal illness, yet she is the most positive person one can meet. She wants a boy to fall for her. Not any boy - the most handsome of them all. One day, she may have found her match.

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

Giuseppe Tornatore traces three generations of a Sicilian family in in the Sicilian town of Bagheria (known as Baarìa in the local Sicilian dialect), from the 1930s to the 1980s, to tell the story of the loves, dreams and delusions of an unusual community.

While vacationing on the crowded beaches of Riccione, a group of teenagers becomes fast friends as they grapple with relationship issues and romance.

Two brothers who hate themselves are going to spend Christmas with their mother. She tries to get them together.

Love and injury in time of war. Attilio de Giovanni teaches poetry in Italy. He has a romantic soul, and women love him. But he is in love with Vittoria, and the love is unrequited. Every night he dreams of marrying her, in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, as Tom Waits sings. Vittoria travels to Iraq with her friend, Fuad, a poet; they are there with the second Gulf War breaks out. Vittoria is injured. Attilio must get to her side, and then, as war rages around him, he must find her the medical care she needs. In war, does love conquer all?

When Antonia's husband Massimo is killed in a car accident, she accidentally discovers that he has been having a same-sex affair with a produce wholesaler named Michele.

Art professor Nino Rolfe attempts to break down his wife Teresa's conventional modesty. Noticing her affection for their daughter's fiancé, Nino instigates her sexual interest in him - setting off a chain of unexpected events and emotional complications...

An independent-minded American tour guide is fired from her job in Rome just before Christmas. She crosses paths with an American executive named Oliver, who wants to buy a high-end Italian ceramics company. Oliver hires Angela to be his tour guide around the Eternal City, as the owner of the ceramics company won’t sell it to him until he learns “the heart and soul of Rome.” But is there another heart and soul that he may win?

The everyday life of accountant Levante, his family and the other people of a small town in the Tuscan countryside is taken by storm by the serendipitous arrival of five gorgeous Spanish flamenco dancers.

In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.

Stranded and alone on a desert island during a cruise, a spoiled rich woman and a deckhand fall in love and make a date to reunite after their rescue.

In this rom-com challenging the concept of soulmates, parallel storylines portray four single friends as they pair up in different couple combinations.

It's 1943 and World War II is raging in Europe. In New York, Arturo and Flora the daughter of a restaurant owner are in love, but she is promised in marriage to the son of a Mafia boss. There is a way around this, but to be able to marry Flora, Arturo needs to get permission from her father, who lives in a village in Sicily. Arturo doesn't have any money, so the only way he can get to Sicily is to enlist in the U.S. Army, which is preparing for a landing on the island.

The relationship between Ed, a married astronomer and Amy, his lover, who spend their years apart, is based only on phone calls and texts. One day Amy begins noticing something strange in Ed's messages.

How much do we really know about ourselves when we make a decision? What if there are multiple versions of our I within us, each with something to say?

Gianni is a serial seducer but his life is destined to change when he meets Chiara, a beautiful woman who has had an accident and is paraplegic.

A spoiled rich woman and a brutish Communist deckhand become stranded alone on a desert island after venturing away from their cruise.

Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.

A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.

The teenage son of two fathers makes a documentary film about his parents but is surprised when a real-life plot twist occurs in his family.

A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.

Giulia and Carlo have been happy together for three years, but Giulia's announcement that she is pregnant sends him into a secret panic. Terrified at his imminent entry into the adult world of irreversible responsibilities, Carlo finds himself tempted by a bewitching 18-year-old girl, Francesca, whom he meets by chance at a wedding. The possibility of one last youthful crazy fling before the impending prison of parenthood proves to be too attractive to resist.

Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna as they plan to get rid of her older husband.

Italy from the '80s to the present day, through the dreams, loves, successes and failures of four friends.

In Italy, small-town newlyweds Wanda and Ivan Cavalli embark on their honeymoon in the big city of Rome. Ivan dutifully wants to keep appointments with family and church, but Wanda is only interested in meeting her favorite photo-strip star known as "The White Sheik". While Wanda impetuously sneaks away to locate the object of her affections, disconsolate Ivan tries his hardest to keep up appearances with the couple's relatives.

Italy, 16th century. Petruchio, a choleric, lying and poor rural landowner from Verona, arrives in Padua in search of fortune and a wife, while Baptista, a wealthy merchant, announces that he will not allow Bianca, his youngest daughter, to marry until the temperamental and unruly Katherina, his eldest daughter, does.

While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia, a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives. The ghost of the beloved and sexual object of desire Italia chases him in his memories.

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

From married couples to platonic roommates to testy rivals with romantic chemistry, the never-ending battle of the sexes gets personal.

A bad boy and a socialite girl hook-up.

In 1950s Ferrara, a lonely innkeeper explores a series of relationships while awaiting her missing husband’s return from war.

A summer fling born under the Sicilian sun quickly develops into a heartbreaking love story that forces a boy and girl to grow up too quickly.

Mariano has been married for 10 years with Miranda, a woman way out of his league. Their small-town life is disrupted by womanizing photographer Andrea, who — struck by her good looks — offers Miranda a one-time modelling job. Albeit hesitant, the couple eventually accepts his invitation to the Seychelles...

Divorced high school PE teacher Gilberto falls in love with Margherita, unaware that she is the mother of Paolina, a student who's been hitting on him.