7. A Separation (2011)
“A Separation” is an Iranian drama film that focuses on a middle-class couple, Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) in Tehran who have a sweet 11-year-old daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) and live with Nader’s father who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. They have agreed in principle to leave the country and move abroad, where they hope Termeh’s prospects might be better. However, while Simin wants to leave with her husband and daughter now, Nadar decides to stay for his father’s sake, resulting in Simin filing for divorce.
Asghar Farhadi’s film concentrates on every character’s motivations and their resulting actions. All of them try their best to give themselves and each other the best possible life, but are limited by problems like health, money and religion. The audience understands the logic in their incentives and empathises with the hard decisions they must make for the better.
But their situation becomes worse after Nader hires a caregiver, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), for his father. Her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) wouldn’t allow her to work in a man’s household without his wife present but since they desperately need the money, she hides it from him.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, becoming the first Iranian film to win the award. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and received the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor.
8. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Directed by Chris Columbus and based on the novel “Alias Madame Doubtfire” by Anne Fine, the film stars the late Robin Williams (who also served as co-producer) as Daniel, a recently divorced man who loses custody of his children due to his sudden loss of residence and employment. As a result he only gets visitation rights on Saturdays and misses his children so desperately that he disguises himself as a middle-aged British nanny in order to be near them.
With the help of his makeup artist brother, his disguise is surprisingly good. Mrs. Doubtfire ironically turns out to be the nanny from heaven, who is on time and helps and is firm about chores and homework, all the things his ex-wife (Sally Field) needed from Daniel until she gave up.
Besides the comedic rushed wardrobe changes, the silly voices and everyone talking about him when he’s present, the movie has tremendous heart. Robbins is completely devoted to getting his children back, not only through Mrs. Doubtfire but also through more proper means like finding another voice animating job and getting his apartment in order.
But things are going too well for Daniel so enter Pierce Brosnan as his ex-wife’s new boyfriend and potential threatening father-figure for his children. Robbins manages to portray humour, frustration and desperation in all his scenes. No matter how ridiculous the situation, the audience is cheering him on until the end.
9. Divorce Italian Style (1961)
This 60s Italian comedy film directed by Pietro Germi focuses on Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni), a Sicilian nobleman who is married to the loyal but (at least from his perspective) unattractive Rosalia (Daniela Rocca).
Through his humorous narration and his melodramatic familial banter, the audience quickly learns that he is in love with his cousin Angela (a 15-year-old Stefania Sandrelli), an attractive young woman who he watches sleep through his bathroom window after his wife goes to bed. However, Ferdinando only manages to see her during the summers because she studies at a nunnery for the rest of the year.
In terms of getting rid of his wife, divorce doesn’t seem to enter his thoughts as much as casual and comedic “accidental” murder. He soon learns that Angela reciprocates his feelings of desire and plots to lure his wife into having an affair so that he can catch her, murder her, and receive a light sentence (maximum seven years) for committing an “honour” killing. He finds a suitable man who he thinks his wife would be attracted to and hires him to repaint his fresco in his house, so that Rosalia can bond with him.
His main plan is often interrupted by everyone else in the house, like his maid, his elderly parents, his spinster sister and her boyfriend who he always seems to be interrupting, and his uncles who enter as they please. This film won the Academy Award for Best Writing and it was nominated both for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for Best Director.
10. Divorce American Style (1967)
An exceptional comedic satire that milks the new wave of divorces, remarriages and blended families in suburban American families in the sixties, the film focuses on Richard Harmon (Dick Van Dyke) and his wife Barbara’s (Debbie Reynolds) strained relationship after seventeen years of marriage and two kids.
The title pays homage to the previously mentioned “Divorce Italian Style” but is no way an American remake of it. The director, Bud Yorkin, examines the couple’s fights through passive aggressive silence and hostile bedtime routines with them banging drawers closed, rifling through hangers, violently brushing their teeth in a coordinated sequence that only a married couple who’ve been together for such a long time can unconsciously achieve.
They divorce and Richard moves into a motel room and meets another divorced man Nelson (Jason Robards) who introduces him to his ex-wife (Jean Simmons). The problem of alimony is the main driving force of the plot. Nelson needs a leg operation and wants to get re-married to his pregnant fiancé, but he can’t afford it until his ex-wife remarries herself and frees him of alimony payments.
So the broken up couple strive to set up Barbara with another man so that when they’d get married, Richard would be free of alimony payments too and would be free to marry Nelson’s ex-wife, therefore relieving him of alimony too and able to get his surgery and re-marry himself. Despite the hilarious complexity of intermingling marriages, the film is quite discreet in its method.
11. Husbands And Wives (1992)
Woody Allen’s comedy-drama deals with two couples: Jack (director Sydney Pollack) and Sally (Judy Davis), and then Gabe (Woody Allen) and Judy (Mia Farrow), who have been best friends for years. It opens with a long, jerky documentary style take as it captures Gabe and Judy react to the news of their friends’ separating.
Judy responds particularly badly to their separation, acting similarly to a child learning that their parents are divorcing, or maybe even more so. Gabe is just confused at both their divorce and his wife’s overemotional reaction while the couple are relaxed and insisting that it will make them “grow”.
Gabe and Judy are in shock mainly because it shatters their impression of a perfect relationship, and if they can break up, so can they. That partners who may agree on the same things and appreciate each other may not be as good as a match as someone who strives to change the other’s lifestyle and is completely opposite to them.
After a bit of time, Gabe runs into Jack and finds out that he already has a girlfriend who is half their age. She is a blonde, attractive aerobics instructor who has changed his life for the “better” by making him get healthy by going on a diet, running with her and other indoor vigorous activities. His attraction to youth as an attempt to get a “do-over” is reflected in Gabe’s interest in one of his students (Juliette Lewis).
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Judy Davis) and Best Writing (Woody Allen).
12. Blue Valentine (2010)
Derek Cianfrance’s film is dedicated to the realistic portrayal of the birth and decay of an exhausting relationship. The married couple, Dean Pereira (Ryan Gosling) and Cynthia “Cindy” Heller (Michelle Williams who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress), together with their unexpected baby Frankie, are seen shifting between two periods of their lives – when they first meet and begin their relationship when they were 24-years-old and in the present when they are 30-years-old during the dissolution of their marriage.
Toward the end of the six years, Cindy is hardly able to remember why she wanted to marry Dean, while Dean is frustrated with her thoughts that what they are is not enough. His grand romanticism lingers throughout their relationship, but Cindy’s love for it dies out since it doesn’t compensate for all the times he’s not there when she needs him. He seems stuck in the past, unable to face adult responsibilities and marriage problems.
Preparing for their roles, Gosling and Williams rented a home and brought their own clothing and belongings. They bought groceries with a budget based on their characters’ incomes, filmed home movies and took family portraits together with the actress portraying their daughter.
13. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
George Cukor’s romantic comedy based on the Broadway play of the same name by Philip Barry focuses on a wealthy socialite Tracy Lord’s (Katherine Hepburn) wedding to George Kittredge (John Howard) that is interrupted by “Spy” magazine’s reporters Mike Connor (James Stewart), his photographer Liz (Ruth Hussay) and her alcoholic but charming ex-husband Dexter Haven (Cary Grant).
A popular genre during the 1930s and 1940s, “comedy of remarriage”, the film bypasses the Production Code, that at the time banned any explicit references to or attempts to justify adultery and illicit sex. Through divorcing the protagonists and having them flirt or date other people, but all the while still have them emotionally linked to their ex-partner was a way to cheat, but not really.
It was nominated for six Academy Awards including Outstanding Production, Best Director for George Cukor, Best Actress for Katherine Hepburn, and Best Supporting Actress for Ruth Hussey, as well as winning Best Actor for James Stewart and Best Screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart.