Movies like Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999)
The best movies like Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999) are My King (2015), The Children of the Century (1999) and Someone I Loved (2009). If Balzac: A Life of Passion hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMy King (2015)7.1/10 from 824 votes
- NewestMore Than Ever (2022)Released 2022
- In FrenchMy King (2015)Also in French
My King (2015)
Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious ski accident. Dependent on the medical staff and pain relievers, she takes time to look back on a turbulent relationship that she experienced with Georgio.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Children of the Century (1999)
True tale of the tumultuous love affair between two French literary icons of the 19th Century, novelist George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset. But their affair falls apart during an excursion to Venice, Italy where Musset is distracted by drugs and Sand by a handsome doctor.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisSomeone I Loved (2009)
One night, Pierre decides to reveal his painful secret to his daughter-in-law, who's just been abandoned by her husband. Pierre's secret is about his secret love to Mathilde, the woman he left to instead follow an easier path in life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy First Time (2012)
Zachary is 20 years old. Dark and independent, he collects amorous conquests and school failure. Sarah is 18 years old. First class, fragile, she fills her emotional gaps with perfect control of his life. Nothing should close and yet, the year of the tank, for six months, they will live a love against which nothing can be, the true, the big one that marks a life forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Brilliant Career (1979)
A young woman who is determined to maintain her independence finds herself at odds with her family who wants her to tame her wild side and get married.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNine Lives (2005)
Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhite Wedding (1989)
A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStella (2008)
Paris, 1977. Eleven year old Stella knows poker better than grammar when she starts the year at a prestigious new school. There, she discovers the possibilities of a whole new world outside her parents' bar.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHollywood Dirt (2017)
Hollywood arrives in force to Quincy, the small town where the secret Crown Cola billionaire's live. They want to film about the billionaire's and how they made their fortunes. Summer Jenkins, who was the town pariah, joins forces with the scout, Ben, and finds filming locations, extras, lessons with the town officials and house owners, etc. When Cole Masten arrives, they hate each other, but sparks fly. Cole is running from a nasty divorce, yet is captivated by Summer. Summer is dying to leave town to get away from the gossip. This is a great story about Southern customs, a Southern girl, and a Hollywood star who finds his lady.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNo Limit (2022)
Roxana Aubrey decides to drop her studies and escape her life in Paris for a free diving course in the south of France. She is quickly pulled into a life that reaches new depths brought by the weight of an ocean's descent.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMore Than Ever (2022)
Hélène, a 33-year-old woman from Bordeaux, France, lives happily as a couple with Mathieu, her husband of many years. Her life turns upside down the day she learns she has a rare lung disease. Thanks to a blog, she discovers Norway and decides to follow her instinct. Despite all the love she has for her life partner Mathieu, who is very supportive through her illness, she leaves him behind in France and will cross all Europe to Norway alone in search of a new path and to meet a blogger named Mister that she found on the internet.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIndia Song (1975)
Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the boredom in her life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFrom the Land of the Moon (2016)
In 1950s France, a free-spirited woman trapped in an arranged marriage falls in love with an injured veteran of the Indochinese War.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChaos (2001)
A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Safety of Objects (2002)
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLucky Them (2013)
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Truth About Emanuel (2013)
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCall Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013)
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Beautiful Woman Without Mercy (1921)
"Taking its title from John Keats’s early 19th-century poem, this highly personal melodrama finds Dulac interrogating the archetype of the femme fatale. La belle dame sans merci follows a famous actress who was once seduced and abandoned by a rich man and subsequently resolved to become a “merciless woman,” forever scheming to hurt others (men in particular) in a ruthless yet captivating manner. Dulac challenges the Romantic archetype embodied in Keats’s poem by way of symbolist mise en scène, self-reflexive narration, and her typically associative approach to editing, locating a modern ambiguity within the stereotypical figures of 19th-century art." - Film Society of Lincoln Center
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Summertime (2015)
In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnnalyn (2012)
Agnes is not satisfied with her life. She wants a change, but her relationship with her single parent father and dominant girlfriend inhibit her to do something about it. When the father introduces his new wife, Annalyn, everything changes. The same-aged Filipino stepmother helps Agnes see a new path. Soon emerges something that no one could have foreseen.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
The Extremists' Opera (2016)
The semi-biographical The Extremists' Opera follows the everyday and inner struggles of a women-only alternative theater group delivering explosive and politically controversial explosive stage performances under the control of tough mannered director Naoko.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
Salt of This Sea (2008)
Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Am I Beautiful? (1998)
Between Munich and Seville, the destinies of sixteen characters intertwine and intersect, missing each other or colliding head-on. They are all, without knowing it, at a pivotal moment in their lives...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Deep Impact (1998)
A seven-mile-wide space rock is hurtling toward Earth, threatening to obliterate the planet. Now, it's up to the president of the United States to save the world. He appoints a tough-as-nails veteran astronaut to lead a joint American-Russian crew into space to destroy the comet before impact. Meanwhile, an enterprising reporter uses her smarts to uncover the scoop of the century.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisK-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, the crew must race to save the ship and prevent a nuclear disaster.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Black Balloon (2008)
Thomas is turning 16. His dad's in the army and they've just moved to a town in New South Wales; his mom is pregnant; his older brother, Charlie, who's autistic, has his own adolescent sexual issues. Thomas finds Charlie an embarrassment in public, so when Thomas is attracted to Jackie, a girl in his swim class, Charlie presents any number of obstacles when she drops by their house, when the three of them go for a walk, and during a family birthday dinner. Can Thomas find a way to enter the world of teen romance and still be his brother's keeper, or is Charlie's disability going to prove more than Thomas can handle?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisManivald (2018)
Manivald is a fox in his early 30s. He is still living at home with his mother. One day a young hot wolf called Toomas comes to fix the washing machine. A love triangle develops between the three of them. Things get out of hand and Manivald realizes that it is time to move out.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance
Like Balzac: A Life of Passion and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Balzac: A Life of Passion?
The closest matches to Balzac: A Life of Passion are My King (2015), The Children of the Century (1999) and Someone I Loved (2009). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Balzac: A Life of Passion?
Start with My King (2015), the closest match to Balzac: A Life of Passion.
What is the highest-rated movie like Balzac: A Life of Passion?
My King (2015), rated 7.1/10 by 824 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Balzac: A Life of Passion?
More Than Ever (2022) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Balzac: A Life of Passion?
Yes: My King (2015), The Children of the Century (1999) and Someone I Loved (2009).
How are movies similar to Balzac: A Life of Passion chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Balzac: A Life of Passion, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.