Best movies like A Leap in the Dark
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Mauro, a judge, is worried about his older sister Marta, who took care of him since he was a boy, and is now affected by psychic problems and suicide fantasies. She seems to recover from her depression when Mauro acquaints her with Giovanni, a brilliant actor at the edge of legality. Mauro become unconsciously jealous of this relationship, and try to get Giovanni arrested... Written by Francesco Benzi.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 466
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, France, West Germany
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: independent film
Best tv shows and movies like A Leap in the Dark (1980):
Similar in 85%
I Sent a Letter to My Love (1980)
Plot Summary:
A middle-aged disabled man unknowingly begins a lonely hearts correspondence with his own unmarried sister, who takes care of him. As he writes more and more to her, he begins to fall in love, and she, knowing that it is her brother who is writing, discovers a new, tender side to him. But trouble looms when he asks to meet her in person.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 427
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Sea Shadow (2011)
Plot Summary:
Mansoor, a 16 year-old teenager, living in a coastal "freej" (an Emirati neighborhood), has strong feelings for 16 year-old girl Kaltham. But culture and tradition, as well as family hardship, make it difficult for him to express his feelings. A conversation with his "know-it-all" friend convinces him that a gift is the best way to express love, and so, he begins to look for ways to save money for the gift without arousing the suspicion of his family and friends.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 194
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: United Arab Emirates
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Wasted! (1996)
Plot Summary:
Twentysomething innocents Jacqui and Martijn move to Amsterdam and immerse themselves in the intense and drug-laden underground club scene. Life turns out to be far more complicated, difficult, and dangerous than they bargained for. Their relationship is tested - repeatedly.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 728
Genere: Romance, Drama
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
As a Man Grows Older (1962)
Plot Summary:
The place is Trieste and the time is 1927. Emilio Brentani leads a peaceful and uneventful life with his older sister Amalia. At least until the day he meets Angiolina Zarri, a beautiful young woman. But the lady is also fickle, wayward and coquettish. Unfortunately for him, Emilio falls madly in love with her.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 302
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Sweet Dreams (2016)
Plot Summary:
Turin, 1969. Nine-year-old Massimo’s idyllic childhood is shattered by the mysterious death of his mother. The young boy refuses to accept this brutal loss, even if the priest says she is now in Heaven. Years later in the 90s, adult Massimo has become an accomplished journalist. After reporting on the war in Sarajevo, he begins to suffer from panic attacks. As he prepares to sell his parents’ apartment, Massimo is forced to relive his traumatic past. Compassionate doctor Elisa could help tormented Massimo open up and confront his childhood wounds….
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: tense, touching, suspense, suspenseful, non-linear, exciting
Similar in 75%
Malady of Love (1987)
Plot Summary:
Two physicians, one old and one young, fall in love with the same woman, Juliette, a quixotic hairdresser. First, she is with Raoul, the older one; then passion for Clément, the younger doctor, takes over. Raoul fights back, playing on Clément's guilt and Juliette's lack of self-assurance; then, Clément makes his case to Juliette, abandons his fiancée, and takes her to the provinces where he sets up practice and asks her to have a baby. She panics and abruptly leaves Clément, taking up with Raoul again. When she contracts Hodgkin's disease and the treatment does no good, Raoul believes she has the malady of love. Is there a cure?.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 254
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
The Appointment (1969)
Plot Summary:
The lawyer Federico Fendi has reasons to believe that his wife Carla in secret is Rome's highest paid prostitute.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 848
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: sentimental, bad ending, suspense, cynical
Similar in 85%
A Tale of Love (1986)
Plot Summary:
This drama about a young girl's struggle to overcome the dehumanization of poverty depicts the steady, corrosive effects of her life on her psyche. Bruna (Valeria Golino) has had to work since the age of 13 to help support her father and brothers. She gets up at 3 A.M. to catch the bus to go clean offices, and when she is home, she cleans and cooks for her siblings and father. In spite of this existence, she is spunky and optimistic. As she gets older, she falls in love with Sergio (Bals Roca-Rey), and he moves in with her and her family. But that relationship ends when she meets another young man, Mario (Livio Panieri). This new romance leads her away from her siblings and father and although there is no inkling of any trouble, the drudgery of her past existence catches up with her.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 116
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
The Eyes, the Mouth (1982)
Plot Summary:
A rich Italian's shocking suicide means different things to his twin brother (Lou Castel), mother (Emmanuelle Riva) and pregnant lover (Angela Molina).
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical
Similar in 75%
Unloved (1966)
Plot Summary:
The story of the tumultuous relationship between a Jewish girl called Noemi and a Polish art student named Kamil is set at the outbreak of World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 52
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Poland
Duration: 79 min
Plot tags: neurotic, pre war
Similar in 82%
Victory March (1976)
Plot Summary:
The drawbacks and difficulties of military life are explored in this film. Paolo Passeri is a college graduate, somewhat spoiled, somewhat effete, who finds himself in an officer training program under the stern martinet, Captain Asciutto. He gradually becomes acclimated to the military mind-set, and when the Captain's wife decides to take a romantic interest in him, he does not report her dangerous peculiarities to anyone.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 314
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France, West Germany
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: grotesque
Similar in 81%
The Rabbit Is Me (1965)
Plot Summary:
The Rabbit Is Me was made in 1965 to encourage discussion of the democratization of East German society. In it, a young student has an affair with a judge who once sentenced her brother for political reasons; she eventually confronts him with his opportunism and hypocrisy. It is a sardonic portrayal of the German Democratic Republic's judicial system and its social implications. The film was banned by officials as an anti-socialist, pessimistic and revisionist attack on the state. It henceforth lent its name to all the banned films of 1965, which became known as the "Rabbit Films." After its release in 1990, The Rabbit Is Me earned critical praise as one of the most important and courageous works ever made in East Germany. It was screened at The Museum of Modern Art in 2005 as part of the film series Rebels with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 393
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: East Germany
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: banned
Similar in 79%
Mad Love (2015)
Plot Summary:
1959. Guilty of a double-murder, a man is beheaded. At the bottom of the basket that just welcomed it, the head of the dead man tells his story: everything was going so well! Admired priest, great lover - his earthly paradise seemed to have no end. Inspired by a scandal surrounding the Priest of Uruffe in the 1950s.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 240
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, rough, suspenseful, unusual plot structure
Similar in 86%
My Golden Days (2015)
Plot Summary:
Paul is preparing to leave Tajikistan, while thinking back on his adolescent years. His childhood, his mother's madness, the parties, the trip to the USSR where he lost his virginity, the friend who betrayed him and the love of his life.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: captivating, sentimental, sincere, suspense, erotic, sexy, stylized, sensual
Similar in 88%
The Tree (2010)
Plot Summary:
The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Australia, Germany, Italy, USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, touching, emotional, romantic, stylized, romantic drama, sincere, serious, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Ernesto (1979)
Plot Summary:
Ernesto (Martin Hahn) is a young Italian Jew of the early 1900s who works in his uncle's factory in Trieste. Not entirely secure with his sexual orientation, Ernesto enters into an affair with one of his uncle's employees--then experiments with heterosexuality, courtesy of an obliging prostitute. When the boy finds himself participating in an arranged marriage with the female twin of one of his male lovers, he finally makes the choice that will determine the direction of his subsequent sex life.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 557
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, Spain, West Germany
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: crying, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 78%
Half-Price (2003)
Plot Summary:
Demi-Tarif follows the low-key adventures of three young siblings, Romeo, Launa, and the youngest - Leo, left on their own in a rundown Paris apartment. One of them narrates, wistfully explaining how their mother abandoned them and calls them once in a while to see how they are doing or tell them she loves them. The three kids do as they please, roaming the streets, running out of restaurants without paying for food, and shoplifting from the local grocery store. They eat whatever and whenever they want, gorging themselves on sweets. They beg for change on the Metro and show up late for school in tattered, dirty clothes. All the while, they try to keep the fact that they are alone a secret from the world of adults.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 215
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 63 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Hollow Reed (1996)
Plot Summary:
Following the break-up of his marriage after revealing his homosexuality, GP Martin Wyatt loses custody of his son Oliver to his now ex-wife Hannah and her new partner Frank. It is not long, however, until Oliver appears at the house of Martin and his new lover Tom claiming to have been beaten up by boys in the park. After another incident, Martin puts two and two together and comes to the conclusion that Frank has been beating Oliver without Hannah's knowledge. Martin then begins a long courtroom custody battle to win back his son.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: UK, Germany, Spain, France
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, serious, emotional, independent film, psychological, rough, sexy, thought provoking, clever
Similar in 77%
The Conviction (1991)
Plot Summary:
A girl and her art professor get trapped inside a castle-museum after it closes at night. After a little resistance she agrees to have sex with him, but then she sues the professor for rape. The professor will have to prove his innocence.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 310
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France, Switzerland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: controversial
Similar in 77%
That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)
Plot Summary:
Servais Mont, a photographer, meets Nadine Chevalier who earns her money starring in cheap soft-core movies. Trying to help her, he borrows the money from the loan sharks to finance the theatrical production of 'Richard III' and gives Nadine a part.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Italy, West Germany
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: anthology, art house, cult classic, experimental, avant garde, underground film, atmospheric, serious, realistic, surreal
Similar in 75%
Before the Revolution (1964)
Plot Summary:
The study of a youth on the edge of adulthood and his aunt, ten years older. Fabrizio is passionate, idealistic, influenced by Cesare, a teacher and Marxist, engaged to the lovely but bourgeois Clelia, and stung by the drowning of his mercurial friend Agostino, a possible suicide. Gina is herself a bundle of nervous energy, alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted, and unhinged. They begin a love affair after Agostino's funeral, then Gina confuses Fabrizio by sleeping with a stranger. Their visits to Cesare and then to Puck, one of Gina's older friends, a landowner losing his land, dramatize contrasting images of Italy's future. Their own futures are bleak.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: aesthetic, sentimental, atmospheric, serious, realistic, experimental, contemplative, avant garde
Similar in 78%
The Star Maker (1995)
Plot Summary:
The adventures and deceptions of a photographer who travels through the small villages of Sicily pretending that he is working for the big film studios in Rome.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, uplifting, serious, atmospheric, touching, captivating, realistic, anamorphic, erotic
Similar in 83%
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
Plot Summary:
Martin and Hazel Quarrier are small-town fundamentalist missionaries sent to the jungles of South America to convert the Indians. Their remote mission was previously run by the Catholics, before the natives murdered them all. They are sent by the pompous Leslie Huben, who runs the missionary effort in the area but who seems more concerned about competing with his Catholic 'rivals' than in the Indians themselves. Hazel is terrified of the Indians while Martin is fascinated. Soon American pilot Lewis Moon joins the Indian tribe but is attracted by Leslie's young wife, Andy. Can the interaction of these characters and cultures, and the advancing bulldozers of civilization, avoid disaster?.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: USA, Brazil
Duration: 189 min
Plot tags: enigmatic, thought provoking, touching, captivating, bleak, realistic, independent film, serious, contemplative, sexy
Similar in 85%
Contempt (1963)
Plot Summary:
A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 35000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: art house, philosophical, erotic, grindhouse, visual, psychological, clever, witty, talky, cynical
Similar in 81%
Beauty of the Day (1967)
Plot Summary:
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 48000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sexual, psycho sexual, sexy, surreal, art house, ambiguous ending, sensual, erotic, visual, psychological thriller
Similar in 89%
The Man of My Life (2006)
Plot Summary:
A man vacationing in the country with his wife and children finds ideas he has of himself unexpectedly challenged in director Zabou Breitman's intimate drama.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, psychological, romantic, sexy, captivating, serious, sexual, queer cinema
Similar in 75%
The Best of Youth (2003)
Plot Summary:
Spanning four decades, from the chaotic 1960s to the present, director Marco Tullio Giordana's passionate epic 'La Meglio Gioventu' follows two Italian brothers through some of the most tumultuous events of recent Italian history.
IMDB Rating: 8.5
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy
Duration: 366 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, sincere, emotional, realistic, political, sad, talky, captivating, family saga
Similar in 90%
Three Brothers (1981)
Plot Summary:
In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come: Raffaele imagines his death, Rocco dreams of lifting the youth of Naples out of violence, drugs, and corruption, Nicola pictures embracing his estranged wife. Meanwhile, the old man and his young granddaughter explore the rhythms of the farm and grieve together.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, crying
Similar in 80%
Devil in the Flesh (1986)
Plot Summary:
An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: erotic, weeping, serious, realistic, biting, sexual, controversial, crying, independent film, sexy
Similar in 84%
Come Undone (2000)
Plot Summary:
Story of two gorgeous, young French boys who begin a passionate relationship that boils over and threatens to destroy both their lives. Shy Mathieu is 18-years-old and on summer vacation in the south of France. He spends his days lazily sunning himself at the beach, until he spies the handsome Cédric and falls in love. The film, like a dream, flows back and forth between the past and present, often asking us to fill the deliberate jumps in time.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: emotional, touching, meditative, lyrical, sentimental, contemplative, erotic, sexual, lgbt cinema, serious