Best movies like Pain and Glory

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Julieta (2016)

Plot Summary:

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

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Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

Plot Summary:

Luis Molina and Valentin Arregui are cell mates in a South American prison. Luis, a homosexual, is found guilty of immoral behaviour and Valentin is a political prisoner. To escape reality Luis invents romantic movies, while Valentin tries to keep his mind on the situation he's in. During the time they spend together, the two men come to understand and respect one another.

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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.

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Reinventing Marvin (2017)

Plot Summary:

A young gay man determined to reinvent his life leaves everything behind on his quest for self-realization.

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Echo Park LA (2006)

Plot Summary:

As Magdalena's 15th birthday approaches, her simple, blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she's pregnant. Kicked out of her house, she finds a new family with her great-granduncle and gay cousin.

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Naked As We Came (2012)

Plot Summary:

Love, loss and hope are tumultuously explored amidst a tranquil backdrop and asks us all the question: What is your dream?.

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Ma Ma (2015)

Plot Summary:

In the aftermath of a tragedy a woman, Magda, reacts with a surge of newfound life that engulfs her circle of family and friends.

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We the Animals (2018)

Plot Summary:

Manny, Joel and Jonah tear their way through childhood and push against the volatile love of their parents. As Manny and Joel grow into versions of their father and Ma dreams of escape, Jonah, the youngest, embraces an imagined world all his own.

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Wandering Heart (2021)

Plot Summary:

Santiago, gay single father, has reached a tipping point in his life. Reeling from a bitter breakup, he is facing the impending departure of his daughter Laila, with whom he shares a close yet emotionally charged relationship. As the fear of being alone threatens to swallow him whole, his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Over the course of a chaotic summer divided between Argentina and Brazil, Santiago must learn to let go of Laila so each can find their own freedoms.

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Live Flesh (1997)

Plot Summary:

A scorned ex-convict forces himself into the lives of the couple who put him behind bars.

Similar in 86%

Gods and Monsters (1998)

Plot Summary:

It's 1957, and Whale's heyday as the director of "Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein" and "The Invisible Man" is long behind him. Retired and a semi-recluse, he lives his days accompanied only by images from his past. When his dour housekeeper, Hannah, hires a handsome young gardener, the flamboyant director and simple yard man develop an unlikely friendship, which will change them forever.

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Beach Rats (2017)

Plot Summary:

An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.

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End of the Century (2019)

Plot Summary:

Two men meet in Barcelona and after spending a day together they realize that they have already met twenty years ago.

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What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984)

Plot Summary:

Almodóvar has described his fourth film as a homage to Italian Neorealism, although this tribute also involves jokes about paedophilia, prostitution, and a telekenetic child. The film, set in the towerblocks around Madrid, depicts female frustration and family breakdown.

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High Heels (1991)

Plot Summary:

High Heels is a murder mystery comedy centering on flamboyant actress Becky del Paramo and her daughter Rebecca, a television anchorwoman. After being estranged for 15 years, Becky re-enters Rebecca's life when she comes to perform a concert. Rebecca, she finds, is now married to one of Becky's ex-lovers, Manuel. The mother and daughter begin making up for lost time, when suddenly, a murder occurs.

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Matador (1986)

Plot Summary:

A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.

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The Deputy and the Congressman (1978)

Plot Summary:

Madrid, Roberto Orbea is a member of the Spanish communist party. He is married to Carmen, and he has been elected as Deputy in the first democratic elections in Spain. But his enemies, the fascist, know his double life. Roberto likes boys, and they hire Juanito to seduce the politician. They fall in love.

Similar in 81%

Law of Desire (1987)

Plot Summary:

When porn director Pablo reluctantly breaks up with his boyfriend, Juan, he encourages him to stay in touch. Juan moves away to live in a lighthouse and eventually writes his ex, but in the interim Pablo has taken up a psychotic new lover, Antonio (Antonio Banderas). Antonio intercepts their correspondence and flies into a towering rage, terrifying Pablo but inspiring him creatively as he works on a play about his transsexual sister.

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Bad Education (2004)

Plot Summary:

Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, know love, the movies and fear in a religious school at the beginning of the 1960s. Father Manolo, director of the school and its professor of literature, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three are followed through the next few decades, their reunion marking life and death.

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James White (2015)

Plot Summary:

James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

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My Mother (2015)

Plot Summary:

Margherita, a director in the middle of an existential crisis, has to deal with the inevitable and still unacceptable loss of her mother.

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Talk to Her (2002)

Plot Summary:

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.

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Parallel Mothers (2021)

Plot Summary:

Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, middle-aged, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

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Time to Leave (2005)

Plot Summary:

Romain, 31, a photographer, learns that a malignancy may kill him within a few months. Decisions: treatment? work? how to tell his lover and his family. He remembers the sea and himself as a child. He stares in the mirror. He's cruel: facing death, he pushes people away - what's the point? He visits his grandmother to tell her; on the way, he chats briefly with a waitress. He looks at old photos, visits a childhood tree house. He takes pictures. Returning from his grandmother's, he stops for food and sees the waitress, Jany, again. She makes a request. He returns to an empty flat - his lover has left. Can Jany's proposition give him a way to move past self-pity?.

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The Great Beauty (2013)

Plot Summary:

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

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Mommy (2014)

Plot Summary:

A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.

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All About My Mother (1999)

Plot Summary:

A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his birthday as he runs to seek an actress' autograph. Beside herself with grief, she returns to Barcelona to tell the boy's father about the death of the son he never knew he had.

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Plot Summary:

A coming-of-age story based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Chbosky, which follows 15-year-old freshman Charlie, an endearing and naive outsider who is taken under the wings of two seniors. A moving tale of love, loss, fear and hope - and the unforgettable friends that help us through life.

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Any Day Now (2012)

Plot Summary:

In the late 1970s, when a mentally handicapped teenager is abandoned, a gay couple takes him in and becomes the family he's never had. But once the unconventional living arrangement is discovered by authorities, the men must fight the legal system to adopt the child.

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My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Plot Summary:

In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.