When films break couples up: “‘Barbie’ was the beginning of the end”
On one of the very first days of 2019, I went to see Can You Ever Forgive Me with my then-boyfriend. This came immediately after a slightly turbulent patch that had involved a short break, then reunion – and things still hadn’t quite returned to the way they were. The conversation that day was polite and stilted.
Afterwards, we left the cinema, bought ice cream, drove home and broke up. It wasn’t the film’s fault (the decision had been simmering all day) but the weird formality of this specific excursion – asking each other what popcorn size was preferred, politely swapping reviews of the film afterwards – prompted him to ask me, point-blank, what was wrong. My inability to answer honestly is what led us to the end. Nearly six years later, with nothing but love for him, I cannot separate that memory from the film.
Famous film critic Roger Ebert said “the movies are like a machine that generates empathy”. They teach us things about lives different from our own, and bring us closer to loved ones. But what happens when they don’t? When a loved one’s opinion renders them unrecognisable, or a character’s journey hits a little too close to home? To understand this, I tracked down six stories of cinematic experiences that spelled the end for their respective couples – from the Keanu Reeves opinion that destroyed a relationship to the breakdown triggered by Brooklyn.
Some names in the article have been changed
I left my boyfriend over Keanu Reeves
“Back in my heyday, I had a boyfriend named Fabrizio, Fab for short. He was cute, but dumb. There were already some clear red flags. We were watching the 72nd Academy Awards at his new townhouse and Fab said, ‘I can’t believe Keanu Reeves wasn’t nominated for Best Actor for The Matrix.’ And I just said, ‘I gotta go.’ I just packed up my stuff and left right there on the spot.
“I was a film major, and don’t get me wrong, The Matrix was a good movie and I love Keanu Reeves – but at that time he was not doing very much, it was mainly Point Break and The Matrix. Truly, the problem was that Fab often talked about wanting to take care of me and take me travelling but I’m an independent lady. I can see all that stuff on my own. I needed to break away from that; that was really the root of the problem. I think this final Keanu Reeves situation was the clear deciding factor that we were too different.
“I will say, I kind of regret it. Keanu Reeves has really redeemed himself in recent years. But I just want to make it really clear for younger readers that at the time, the thought of him being considered as Best Actor for The Matrix was really ridiculous. He’s done some really good work since, and I believe he’s a really good human who deserves an award.”
– Nicki, teacher, 46, Toronto
Barbie was the beginning of the end
“I had a big argument about Barbie with a guy I was dating. I really hated it. I found it patronising to women and the difficulties we face with regards to ageing, beauty standards and dismantling the patriarchy. I remember this guy digging his heels in about how good it was and I got the feeling he was only doing it to disagree with me. I felt it proved my point about the flaws of the film, where it would satisfy people who had a very limited interest or stake in the issues that Barbie was claiming to tackle and make mainstream, without actually listening to the women who had to deal with them.
“It really was the beginning of the end in that short-lived relationship with someone who didn’t listen to me or take me seriously. It actually proved to be quite a sound measure of his character. After he broke it off with me, I looked back on that conversation as indicative of why it wouldn’t have worked out and his unwillingness to see things from my perspective or meet me halfway.”
– Ella, journalist, 33, London
Midsommar made me realise I was dating a sociopath
“I first saw Midsommar when I was six months into a relationship with a sociopath who was not afraid to admit that he had no emotional availability. I really connected with that first scene, when Dani (Florence Pugh) finds out her family is dead and her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) just isn’t able to be there for her. It was very liberating to see him go up in flames at the end.
“I’m not saying that I needed to be in a cult to get out of that relationship, or burn him in a tent, but it just made me think: ‘Is this how I want my life to be?’. See, my then-boyfriend would say things to get me to drive him to work that night or cook him supper. I had aspirations to go to film school and he would say: ‘No, you should just get your degree. I’m gonna go to Japan and teach English and you can just come with me.’ It was similar to how Dani gets dragged to Sweden in the film. I was going to get dragged to Japan to live with this guy. That was the spark of thinking: ‘I have to end things.’
“Obviously, Dani ends up drugged and in a cult, and I’m sure that’s not what she wants for her life, but the mix of fear and liberation on her face when she knows that he has died – this sounds very dark – it was like a light at the end of the tunnel for me. We broke up exactly a week later.”
–Gee, social media manager/content creator, 23, Nova Scotia
I didn’t even like Glass, but I ditched my boyfriend over it
“Me and my ex-boyfriend went to see Glass, which neither of us particularly cared about. At this point in our relationship, we were just seeking distractions because we didn’t really enjoy spending time together. Afterwards, even though neither of us felt strongly about the movie, we ended up arguing because we were both so focused on our own opinion and how that differed from the other person’s. I didn’t even like it but I ended up arguing that it was great, basically because he didn’t like it. Ultimately, it was all very coded and symbolic of greater issues.
“As the conversation went on I thought: ‘Holy fuck, we should not be arguing over something as insanely insignificant as M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass’. It quickly dawned on me how absurd it was and how this was a conversation that should not be happening between two people that loved each other. I halted the conversation and just said, ‘We need to break up. If this is something that we’re having such a problem talking about, then we’re doomed, we’re done.’
“To stress: I remember literally nothing about this film but at the time, the boiling passion was enough to cause the breakup of a one-and-a-half-year relationship. All I know is that Sarah Paulson is in it and I think she was maybe wearing a fun little suit, but I could be wrong.”
– Cara, writer/video editor, 29, Melbourne
I had a breakdown and moved to the other side of the world after Brooklyn
“I’d been with this guy for a couple of years and I went to my mum’s house and watched Brooklyn. When Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) goes back to Ireland and falls in love with Jim (Domhall Gleeson) but the gossipy lady at the store finds out that she’s actually married in New York, I was devastated. I was so irrationally upset. I felt like her whole life had been taken away from her. It’s just a movie, it’s not really that deep but I was sobbing. My mum was like: ‘What’s wrong, are you okay?’
“Basically, my understanding of the movie was that Tony (Emory Cohen) in New York really loved her but she just went with it. She wasn’t making an active choice and I decided that represented my relationship too. I had a choice: do I just stay in my relationship and be comfortable or do I go and see the world and do things I want to do?
“The crux of this is that I perceived Brooklyn exactly how I wanted to perceive it – like a horoscope. You read a horoscope and it’s so generic but you read it as speaking exactly to you. My mum was like: ‘Oh my god, you’re insane, it’s OK, it’s just a movie,’ but that was the beginning of the end. We broke up a week after that and I moved to London. I’ll always remember Brooklyn.”
– Kate, brand strategist, 30, Auckland
Red Rocket split us up but Jeanne Dielman fixed things
Eleonora: “Caitlin and I were in a situationship and we went to see Red Rocket. Caitlin hated it, and I also didn’t like it but I had seen Tangerine and The Florida Project, so I guess I wasn’t that surprised by the content.”
Caitlin: “We started arguing over it, because I hated it so much and Elle said, ‘That’s just the director’s vibe.’ I said, ‘I get that, but it can still be a bad film, even if it’s their vibe.’ And then Eleonora said, ‘Well, I’ve seen Tangerine and The Florida Project,’ and I just thought, ‘okay, so now you’re suddenly an authority on Sean Baker.’
Eleonora: “Neither of us liked each other’s tone. We spent the entire car ride back to my house in silence.”
Caitlin: “It was a frosty car ride and then lots of tears. I think it was just so shocking because we’d never had a fight before. I thought Elle was being supercilious about her supposed intimate knowledge of Sean Baker and my reaction was very, ‘Oh, well, you know so much about Sean Baker, why don’t you marry him then.’”
Eleonora: “We later broke up when I moved to London, but six months after that Caitlin moved to London. On March 2, 2023, I was going to a screening at the BFI of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles with a friend, but he dropped out. Caitlin had texted me on the day before to wish me a happy birthday. We hadn’t spoken in ages, but I think a lot of the really intense emotion had subsided at that point, so I replied thank you and said I was going to Jeanne Dielman by myself.“
Caitlin: “I was like, ‘Do you want me to come?’ By this point, we were strictly no contact: I’d blocked Elle on Spotify and unfollowed her on Letterboxd. I thought, ‘I’m the one who initiated this no contact, so I’m going have to be the one to reach out.’ So we went to Jeanne Dielman. I was a little bit late, so for the first time we’d seen each other in months Elle was already in the movie theatre and we just sat down. We got halfway through, because it’s three hours long, and then eventually we were like… ‘Should we just go, and maybe talk… or something?’”
Eleonora: “We left halfway through, talked it out, then got back together. Jeanne Dielman was our guardian angel. We’ve been together ever since but we still haven’t seen the second half.”
– Eleanora, internal communications, 29, and Caitlin, secondary school teacher, 30, London
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George Fenwick
NME
