Best movies like A Very Private Affair
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A gorgeous teen, Jill, resides in Switzerland with her mother and harbors feelings for the handsome Fabio, an older man who is married to one of her friends. Growing restless, Jill moves to Paris to pursue ballet, but instead finds success and fame as a model and actress. When Jill, now a celebrity, seeks to retreat from the limelight and returns home to Switzerland, she begins a romance with the newly divorced Fabio, leading to an unwelcome media circus.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: serious, atmospheric, mind bending, realistic, witty, contemplative, stylized
Best tv shows and movies like A Very Private Affair (1962):
Similar in 79%
Sign of the Lion (1962)
Plot Summary:
An American in Paris lives by sponging off his working friends, and throws a party using borrowed money when his rich American aunt dies, believing firmly in his horoscope.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sincere, humorous, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, semi serious
Similar in 81%
Tale of Cinema (2005)
Plot Summary:
In Seoul, the paths of two men and one woman intersect and move apart from one another, centering around their love for cinema. A suicidal student meets a young woman who decides to follow him in his fatal gesture. Coming out of a cinema, Tongsu, an unsuccessful filmmaker, spots a beautiful young woman, and recognizes her : she is the main actress in the film he has just seen. The life of this wavering and distressed young man strangely echoes the one of the young man from the beginning.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, South Korea
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, stylized, independent film, gloomy
Similar in 86%
The Rite (1969)
Plot Summary:
A judge in an unnamed country interviews three actors, together and singly, provoking them while investigating a pornographic performance for which they may face a fine. Their relationships are complicated: Sebastian, volatile, a heavy drinker, in debt, guilty of killing his former partner, is having an affair with that man's widow. She is Thea, high strung, prone to fits, and seemingly fragile, currently married to Sebastian's new partner, Hans. Hans is the troupe leader, wealthy, self-contained, and growing tired. The judge plays on the trio's insecurities, but when they finally, in a private session with him, perform the masque called The Rite, they may have their revenge.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: art house, clever, serious, surreal, contemplative, sexual, sexy
Similar in 90%
Irene (2009)
Plot Summary:
A video diary shot and recorded by the filmmaker, using little more than his imagination and the happenstance and flow of the everyday, finally layering in a lifetime of memories.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 220
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, factual
Similar in 85%
Freddy Hotel (2014)
Plot Summary:
Freddy Angi, separate and homeless, stumbles into strange love affairs, including one with his wife Anna. The two meet now and then as lovers in a hotel room.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 17
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy, Romania
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic, bleak
Similar in 87%
Lotus Eaters (2011)
Plot Summary:
Story follows a group of young Londoners as they struggle to find meaning in their lives while masking their discontent with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 310
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags: serious, atmospheric, realistic, stylized
Similar in 82%
The High Pressures (2014)
Plot Summary:
Miguel travels to Pontevedra, his hometown, with the request of serching for some locations for a movie. His trip takes him back to the place where he grew up, meeting up with some old friends, but also leads him to the possibility of a new relationship: Alicia, a young nurse who will get to calm him down. Miguel will try to finish his work even though he mostly prefers to film the natives he meets, the movements and faces of his friends, the trains coming or the sea. A journey around the uprooting (the cinema) and love.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 91
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 80%
The Soft Skin (1964)
Plot Summary:
Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married with Franca and father of Sabine, around 10. He meets an air hostess, Nicole. They start a love affair, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stand staying away from her.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: depressing, neo noir, anthology, art house, black and white, psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 82%
Shirley: Visions of Reality (2013)
Plot Summary:
A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopper (e.g. "Office at Night", "Western Motel", "Usherette", "A Woman in the Sun") into a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history. Each station in Shirley’s professional and private life from the 1930s to 1960s is precisely dated: It is always August 28/29 of the year in question, as the locations vary from Paris to New York to Cape Cod.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 990
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: serious, atmospheric, realistic, contemplative, experimental, postmodern, offbeat, stylized, weird, beautiful
Similar in 84%
The Portuguese Nun (2009)
Plot Summary:
A young French actress in Lisbon to shoot a movie is intrigued by a nun she sees kneeling in the chapel where she is filming.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 666
Genere: Drama
Country: Portugal, France
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: realistic, sincere, atmospheric, serious, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 82%
Exit: A personal history (2010)
Plot Summary:
A young man travels to Holland for an assisted suicide. The young man was convinced that this was his only way of ending an existence that he considered to lack any dignity.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 22
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: experimental, atmospheric, contemplative, psychological, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, surreal, gloomy
Similar in 78%
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 84%
Scarlet Diva (2000)
Plot Summary:
A young Italian actress embarks on a self-destructive spree of sex, drugs and other excess while doing some soul searching to find the path for redemption.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: stylized, realistic, serious, erotic, sexy, captivating, cult classic, sexual, semi autobiographical, independent film
Similar in 87%
After the Rehearsal (1984)
Plot Summary:
Rational, exacting, and self-controlled theater director, Henrik Vogler, often stays after rehearsal to think and plan. On this day, Anna comes back, ostensibly looking for a bracelet. She is the lead in his new production of Stindberg's "A Dream Play." She talks of her hatred for her mother, now dead, an alcoholic actress, who was Vogler's star and lover. Vogler falls into a reverie, remembering a day Anna's mother, Rakel, late in life, came after rehearsal to beg him to come to her apartment. He awakes and Anna reveals the reason she has returned: she jolts him into an emotional response, rare for him, and the feelings of a young woman and an older man play out.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, West Germany
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: mind bending, psychedelic, surreal, art house, psychological, clever, serious, realistic, contemplative, talky
Similar in 88%
The Wager (2007)
Plot Summary:
An actor at the pinnacle of his Hollywood career finds himself buckling to temptation after he accepts the lead in a classic tale of good versus evil. Michael Steele has just been nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. In the wake of that announcement, Michael is cast in what may be the role of a lifetime. He's set to play the lead in an incredible story of monumental conflict, but will all of the swirling gossip around Michael cause him to stumble on the path of righteousness? His marriage is in jeopardy and his career is on the line. This man who has always tried to do the right thing must find the courage and conviction needed to set his life straight.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 402
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: christian film, serious, realistic, thought provoking, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Amazon Falls (2010)
Plot Summary:
Amazon Falls tells the story of a faded B-movie actress JANA who refuses to let go of her dream of being a star. Famous for her roles in Amazon movies where she portrayed a variety of pre-Xena warrior-princesses, she desperately tries to keep her leg in the B-movie game, and pursues her career with a zealous fervor.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 110
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, atmospheric, captivating, serious, gloomy, semi autobiographical
Similar in 83%
A Few Days of Respite (2010)
Plot Summary:
Mohsen teaches French at the University of Tehran, and Hassan is a photographer. Mohsen and Hassan are also lovers, and in Iran they live in fear, as homosexuality is punishable by death. Tired of denying their love, Mohsen and Hassan flee Iran to head to Paris, where they'll be illegal aliens but can at least live openly as a couple. To avoid arousing suspicion until they arrive in Paris, Mohsen and Hassan keep their distance while traveling, and during a train stop, Mohsen helps a sixty-ish women, Yolande, with her luggage. The two strike up a conversation and she clearly enjoys his company; over dinner, she offers to help him find work in town and let him stay at her apartment. It's clear to Yolande that Mohsen is an illegal immigrant, but she doesn't realize that he's gay, and he finds himself wondering if he should stay with Hassan or live with Yolande, where he would not have love but would enjoy safety, security and could easily become a French citizen through marriage.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 43
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Algeria
Duration: 79 min
Plot tags: emotional, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, queer cinema
Similar in 87%
Everybody's Fine (1990)
Plot Summary:
Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: psychological, philosophical, sentimental, clever, serious, emotional, tragicomedy, realistic, contemplative, road movie
Similar in 81%
The Night (1961)
Plot Summary:
A married couple attend a bourgeois party and wade through the stifling strain that long-term marriage has imposed upon them.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: cerebral, art house, erotic, black and white, neorealism, atmospheric, realistic, contemplative, stylized, sexual
Similar in 81%
Muriel, or The Time of Return (1963)
Plot Summary:
A chamber drama about a widow and her son who live in an antique shop in Boulogne. The widow invites a man whom she loved twenty-two years earlier to visit. Her son is haunted by Muriel, a young woman whose death he may have caused while serving as a soldier in Algeria. As in Resnais' earlier films, memory is deflected, fragmented, enshrined, and imagined.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, psychedelic, anthology, psychological, tense, atmospheric, thought provoking, clever, touching
Similar in 76%
The Fire Within (1963)
Plot Summary:
Alain Leroy is a recovering alcoholic who decides to end his life, but first decides to visit his friends in Paris one last time, in an attempt at finding a reason to continue living.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: philosophical, depressing, art house, independent film, existential, bleak, touching, sad, anthology, powerful
Similar in 81%
A Lake (2008)
Plot Summary:
The story takes place in a country about which we know nothing: a country of snow and dense forests somewhere in the North. A family lives in an isolated house near a lake. Alexi, the brother, is a young man with pure heart. A woodcutter. An ecstatic, prey to epileptic fits, he is entirely opened to the nature that surrounds him. Alexi is terribly close to his younger sister, Hege. Their blind mother, their father and their little brother are the silent witnesses to their overwhelming love. A stranger arrives, a young man barely older that Alexi.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 812
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, emotional, stylized, contemplative, disturbing, controversial, art house, bleak, serious
Similar in 81%
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998)
Plot Summary:
This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here portrayed as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, UK, France
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: sentimental, clever, realistic, talky, independent film, tense, touching, serious, witty, contemplative
Similar in 77%
The Three-Way Wedding (2010)
Plot Summary:
A play writer entertains the actors of his next play, including his ex-wife and her new lover. Everyone is finding his new place.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 242
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: realistic, semi serious, psychological, atmospheric, captivating, sincere, offbeat, humorous, witty, contemplative
Similar in 76%
Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995)
Plot Summary:
Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy, Germany
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexual, light, atmospheric, sexy
Similar in 78%
Beautiful Girl (2014)
Plot Summary:
Odessa is a beautiful girl addicted to the attention and money that being an adult film star brings. William, a lonely mechanic, has a crush on her, and she indulges his fantasy and leads him on. Thinking he can save her and help her find a normal life, he befriends her drug-fueled bodyguard, Angry Jack, to get close to her.
IMDB Rating: 4.1
IMDB Votes: 468
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, sincere, touching, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 90%
2nd Take (2011)
Plot Summary:
Reclusive writer takes aspiring actress under his wing.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 183
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, atmospheric, captivating, touching, serious, gloomy
Similar in 83%
The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980)
Plot Summary:
The gaudy rise and dizzy fall of the last great Hollywood blonde bombshell: Jayne Mansfield.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 956
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sentimental, uplifting, touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy, psychotronic, nostalgic
Similar in 88%
Eight and a Half (1963)
Plot Summary:
With 8 ½ Frederico Fellini leaves a self-portrait where dreams and reality are a mix. With help from a most excellent cast and unique scenery this self reflecting film is one of his master works.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 124000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: art house, psychological, surreal, philosophical, cerebral, stylized, black and white, atmospheric, postmodern, visual
Similar in 87%
The Role of Her Life (2004)
Plot Summary:
Freelance writer in a fashion journal, Claire meets Elisabeth Becker, a movie star. Everything separates them, their characters, their relationships with men, and of course money. Claire is hired as Elisabeth's personal assistant.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 563
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, realistic, semi serious, captivating, humorous