Movies that feel like Brief Encounter (1945)

In late 19th century France, the Countess Louise, wife of a wealthy general, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off her secret debts, then claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, and her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.

In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. As she tells the story of her lifelong love for him, he is forced to reinterpret his own past.

Marty, a butcher who lives in the Bronx with his mother, is unmarried at 34. Good-natured but socially awkward, he faces constant badgering from family and friends to get married but has reluctantly resigned himself to bachelorhood. He then meets Clara, an unattractive school teacher. Realising their emotional connection, Marty promises to call, but family and friends try to convince him not to.

An elderly couple are forced to separate themselves from each other after their children refuse to take both into one house.

Married for eight years with no children, Brits Katherine and Alex Joyce are driving to Italy, their ultimate destination just outside of Naples to sell the villa they have just inherited from his uncle, the villa where they will be staying during their time there. On the drive, they come to the realization that this trip marks the first time that they have truly been alone together, and as such don't really know one another in the true sense.

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.

This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant.

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that they have something deeply in common.

In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.