Best movies like Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor’s beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: France, China
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, touching, realistic, thought provoking, political, contemplative, adaptation directed by original author
Best tv shows and movies like Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002):
Similar in 75%
Sunflower (2005)
Plot Summary:
Sunflower is the story of the Zhang family in Beijing father, mother and son across three decades, centering on the tensions and misunderstandings between father and son. Nine-year-old Xiangyang is having the time of his life, free of adult supervision until the day he meets the father he can hardly remember. Having spent years away, he returns with strong ideas about his son learning to draw. But Xiangyang chafes under his father's constant rules and soon stages his own revolution against the lessons enforced.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 719
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Hong Kong, China, Netherlands
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: uplifting, sentimental, sincere, touching, captivating, family saga, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 75%
Daffodils (2019)
Plot Summary:
A bittersweet love story told through enchanting re-imaginings of popular and iconic New Zealand songs.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 407
Genere: Biography, Drama, Musical, Romance
Country: New Zealand
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: uplifting, sentimental, touching, sweet
Similar in 81%
In the Heat of the Sun (1994)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. It is told from the perspective of Ma Xiaojun nicknamed Monkey, a teenage boy. Monkey and his friends are free to roam the streets of Beijing day and night because the Cultural Revolution has caused their parents and most adults to be either busy or away. The story revolves around Monkey's dalliances with his roguish male friends and his subsequent angst-filled crush with Mi Lan.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China, Hong Kong
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: sincere, epic, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, contemplative, sexual, semi autobiographical, freeze frame
Similar in 88%
Perhaps Love (2005)
Plot Summary:
A love triangle develops during the making of a musical in mainland China.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Musical, Romance
Country: China, Malaysia, Hong Kong
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: stylized, captivating, emotional, psychological, sentimental, sexy, serious
Similar in 85%
So Young (2013)
Plot Summary:
In the brink of the 90s, 18-year-old Zheng Wei steps into her university life with a hopeful heart for love. She forms a great friendship with her roommates and united as a group, they embark on their university life together. Wei meets Chen Hao-Zheng in a chance encounter, and despite initial reluctance, Chen accepts Wei as his girlfriend and the two become inseparable. Four years of university life pass and Wei looks forward to establishing a life together with Chen. However, Chen is forced into an impossible decision to leave Wei. Devastated, Wei decides to start afresh. A decade later, Wei’s previous lovers Lin and Chen both find their way back into her life and she has to make a choice of her next step in life.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: emotional, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 75%
The Light (2004)
Plot Summary:
Camille arrives in Ouessant, the island of her birth off the Brittany coast, to sell the family home. She spends a last night in the house during which she discovers a secret. In 1963 a man came to work with her father, who was the Jument lighthouse operator. He only stayed two months, but his presence proved to be a disturbing catalyst.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, realistic, sexual, sexy
Similar in 90%
Love is the Word (2013)
Plot Summary:
Love is the Word is a moving, romantic and funny coming-of-age drama about the magic of first love and the misery of first lost, set in 1978: the year 'Grease' hit the big screen.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 630
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Netherlands, Belgium
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, sentimental, realistic, captivating, emotional, sexy
Similar in 90%
What the Day Owes the Night (2012)
Plot Summary:
Algeria, the 1930s. Younes is nine years old when he is put in his uncle's care in Oran. Rebaptized Jonas, he grows up among the Rio Salado youths, with whom he becomes friends. Emilie is one of the gang; everyone is in love with her. A great love story develops between Jonas and Emilie, which is soon unsettled by the conflicts troubling the country.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 162 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, captivating, emotional, serious, realistic, family saga, saga, iconic
Similar in 78%
Coming Home (2014)
Plot Summary:
Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, atmospheric, touching, realistic, social
Similar in 84%
Yellow Earth (1984)
Plot Summary:
Yellow earth focuses on the story of a Communist soldier who is sent to the countryside to collect folk songs for the Communist Revolution. There he stays with a peasant family and learns that the happy songs he was sent to collect do not exist; the songs he finds are about hardship and suffering. He returns to the Army, but promises to come back for the young girl, Cuiqiao, who has been spellbound by his talk of the freedom women have under Communist rule and who wants to join the Communist Army.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History, Music, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: political, sentimental, atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, realistic, stylized, gloomy, independent film, interesting
Similar in 78%
Under the Protection of Ka'Bah (2011)
Plot Summary:
Growing up in West Sumatra in the 1920s, Hamid and Zainab comes from families from very different social classes. Hamid is poor, while Zainab is wealthy. Hamid receives a scholarship from Zainab’s father and Hamid’s mother works for Zainab’s family. Hamid and Zainab fall in love and dream of finding a way for society to accept their union, and also to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 124
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Indonesia
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 87%
Picnic (2000)
Plot Summary:
The son of the richest man in town wants to marry the town's beauty queen, but she meets a more interesting stranger who just got off the train.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 242
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, tense
Similar in 88%
Suzhou River (2000)
Plot Summary:
A tragic love story set in contemporary Shanghai. The film stars Zhou Xun in a dual role as two different women and Jia Hongsheng as a man obsessed with finding a woman from his past.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Germany, China
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: neo noir, psychological, atmospheric, serious, stylized, sad, clever, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Love The Way You Are (2019)
Plot Summary:
Opposites clash when spunky girl next door Lin Lin meets eccentric nerd Yuke. Despite being neighbors and schoolmates since childhood, Lin Lin and Yuke barely know each other. When the pair are both admitted into the same university, Lin Lin discovers that Yuke harbors a secret crush for campus beauty, Ruting. Ever the busybody, Lin Lin decides to matchmake Yuke and Ruting, only to find herself gradually falling for Yuke.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 283
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: uplifting, sentimental, romantic, touching, sweet
Similar in 84%
Three Times (2005)
Plot Summary:
There are three stories of women and men: in "A Time for Love" set in 1966, a soldier searches for a young woman he met one afternoon playing pool; "A Time for Freedom," set in a bordello in 1911, revolves around a singer's longing to escape her surroundings; in "A Time for Youth" set in 2005 Taipei, a triangle in which a singer has an affair with a photographer while her partner suffers is dramatized. In the first two stories, letters are crucial to the outcome; in the third, it's cell-phone calls, text messages, and a computer file. Over the years between the tales, as sexual intimacy becomes more likely and words more free, communication recedes.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Taiwan
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags: anthology, sentimental, atmospheric, thought provoking, touching, realistic, contemplative, sexy, art house, slow cinema
Similar in 78%
Zhou Yu's Train (2002)
Plot Summary:
Zhou Yu, a ceramic artisan in China's rural Northwest, has a deep rapport with Chen Qing, a shy sensitive poet. Taking a long train ride every weekend just to make mad passionate love with him, her longing seems insatiable. Until one day, she meets the hedonistic vet Zhang Qiang and begins a torrid affair, which takes her to another train station, and another level of lust. Driven by the locomotive of love and desire, she hustles through a dark tunnel of no return.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China, Hong Kong
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sentimental, atmospheric, touching, serious, contemplative, realistic, surprise ending, non-linear
Similar in 79%
The Classic (2003)
Plot Summary:
Shy Ji-hae's friend is having problems expressing her feelings to the boy she loves, so she asks Ji-hae to write e-mails to him in her name. As the boy falls in love with her letters, Ji-hae discovers the story of her mother's romance which is remarkably similar to her own circumstances.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: South Korea
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, sad, sexy, feel good, romantic comedy, non-linear, tear jerker
Similar in 78%
Oh, My Love (2007)
Plot Summary:
Orphaned and homeless Ranbir Raj re-locates to a small town and orders a glass of milk in the RK Bar. He befriends a prostitute by the name of Gulabji, who invites him to spend the night with her, and when he refuses, she re-directs him to Lillian who rents out rooms. Ranbir meets with Lillian, who has been living alone for 37 years after her son, Vincent, left to join the army and did not return.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, Musical, Romance
Country: India, USA
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, realistic, stylized, visual, visually stunning, modern day adaptation
Similar in 86%
Lan Yu (2001)
Plot Summary:
A love story between a country boy in Beijing to study and a wealthy businessman set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Hong Kong, China
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, captivating, depressing, heartbreaking, lgbt cinema, poignant, crying, serious
Similar in 87%
Lost in Time (2003)
Plot Summary:
Sui Wai lost her fiance Ah Man in a car accident. With the obligations of life sitting heavy on her shoulders, she lives on only to find herself confiding in her beloved through a phone call. Dai Fai. a mini-bus driver who witnessed Ah Man's death, is always there offering her attentive encouragement and support, yet he himself also lives in the shadow of his last relationship. When Siu Wai strives to face the future without the man she loves, Dai Fai finds himself steadily falling in love with her.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Hong Kong
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Under the Hawthorn Tree (2010)
Plot Summary:
The daughter of a right-winger, schoolgirl Jing Qiu (Zhou Dong-Yu) is sent to the countryside for reeducation, and tasked to help write a textbook. There she meets Lao San (Shawn Dou), a young soldier with a bright future ahead. Despite the class divide and parental disapproval, romance blooms against turbulent times.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, sincere, realistic, romantic, serious, emotional
Similar in 85%
The Golden Era (2014)
Plot Summary:
The story of writer Xiao Hong comes alive through memories of her great love affair, literary influence and escape from China during World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: China, Hong Kong
Duration: 177 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, psychological, captivating, romantic drama, touching, realistic, stylized
Similar in 81%
The Road Home (1999)
Plot Summary:
Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: emotional, romantic, road movie, sentimental, atmospheric, stylized, sad, psychedelic, feel good, epic
Similar in 89%
The Little House (2014)
Plot Summary:
Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: sentimental, realistic, psychological, captivating, touching, serious, stylized
Similar in 81%
The Sea Is Watching (2002)
Plot Summary:
Based on Akira Kurosawa's final unproduced script, this Edo-period drama takes place almost entirely inside an ocean-village brothel. O-Shin is a young brothel worker who one night helps a young samurai escape from his pursuers. Against the warnings of her fellow workers, particularly Kikuno and the brothel's owner, O-Shin falls in love with the samurai.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Romance, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, realistic, touching, captivating, contemplative, gloomy, jidai geki
Similar in 77%
The Postman (1994)
Plot Summary:
Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 39000
Genere: Biography, Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, France, Belgium
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: sentimental, emotional, romantic, sad, realistic, breathtaking, heartbreaking, period piece, sincere, touching
Similar in 79%
The Other Side of the Mountain: Part II (1978)
Plot Summary:
The Other Side of the Mountain Part 2 is a 1978 film directed by Larry Peerce. It stars Marilyn Hassett and Timothy Bottoms. It is a sequel to The Other Side of the Mountain.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 385
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 80%
The Whole Wide World (1996)
Plot Summary:
Based on her acclaimed autobiographical book, THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD tells the story of Novalyne Price, an attractive feisty West Texas schoolteacher and her bittersweet, romantic and turbulent relationship with Robert E. Howard, the great pulp fiction writer of the 1930's.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, emotional, period piece, cult classic, sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative, crying
Similar in 89%
84 Charing Cross Road (1987)
Plot Summary:
When a humorous script-reader in her New York apartment sees an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature for a bookstore in London that does mail order, she begins a very special correspondence and friendship with Frank Doel, the bookseller who works at Marks & Co., 84 Charing Cross Road.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: romantic, sweet, touching, sincere, inspirational, offbeat, intellectual, feel good, sentimental, serious
Similar in 88%
The Lover (1992)
Plot Summary:
A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: France, UK
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: sexy, erotic, sexual, psychological, sensual, sentimental, controversial, serious, romantic, visually stunning