Movies like Petulia (1968)
The best movies like Petulia (1968) are Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Four Seasons (1981) and Faces (1968). If Petulia 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 ratedA Woman Under the Influence (1974)7.7/10 from 592 votes
- Newest84 Charing Cross Road (1987)Released 1987
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Four Seasons (1981)
Three middle-aged wealthy couples take vacations together in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Along the way we are treated to mid-life, marital, parental and other crises.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFaces (1968)
Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDarling (1965)
Diana, a beautiful but shallow and easily distracted model and failed actress, toys with the affections of several men while attempting to gain fame and fortune in Swinging London.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGoodbye Again (1961)
Middle-aged businesswoman Paula Tessier rejects the advances of her client's amusing 25-year-old son, Philip Van der Besh, but reconsiders when her longtime philandering partner begins yet another casual affair with a younger woman. She soon learns that May-December romances with older women are frowned upon in society.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Mabel Longhetti, desperate and lonely, is married to a Los Angeles municipal construction worker, Nick. Increasingly unstable, especially in the company of others, she craves happiness, but her extremely volatile behavior convinces Nick that she poses a danger to their family and decides to commit her to an institution for six months. Alone with a trio of kids to raise on his own, he awaits her return, which holds more than a few surprises.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRachel, Rachel (1968)
Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Graduate (1967)
A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Night of the Iguana (1964)
A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSplendor in the Grass (1961)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Last Picture Show (1971)
High school seniors and best friends, Sonny and Duane, live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach's wife. As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures, Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like this84 Charing Cross Road (1987)
When a humorous script-reader in her New York apartment sees an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature for a bookstore in London that does mail order, she begins a very special correspondence and friendship with Frank Doel, the bookseller who works at Marks & Co., 84 Charing Cross Road.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisComing Home (1978)
In 1968 California, a Marine officer's wife falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Sandpiper (1965)
A free-spirited single mother forms a connection with the wedded headmaster of an Episcopalian boarding school in Monterey, California.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSaturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
A 22-year-old factory worker lets loose on the weekends: drinking, brawling, and dating two women, one of whom is older and married.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Warm December (1973)
Widower Dr. Matt Younger and his daughter go to London for a month of dirt-bike racing. While there, Dr. Younger is surprised by finding himself attracted to Catherine, a charming but elusive woman who seems to have some mysterious men following her. A romance slowly develops between the doctor and Catherine, but there are complications to their happiness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Back Street (1961)
Ambitious but thwarted, Rae Smith meets handsome U.S. Marine Paul Saxon, of the Saxon department store chain, as he passes through Lincoln, Nebraska, on his way home from World War II. There's a definite spark between them but circumstances intervene and he leaves town without her. Later she learns he's married. Determined to make it as a fashion designer, Rae moves to New York City and becomes a great success. One day she happens to meet Paul again and again there's that spark but he's still married so, as a form of escape, Rae moves to Rome to set up shop. Once again she meets Paul and finally they begin an actual affair since Paul's shrewish, drunken wife, Liz, won't give him a divorce. Time passes, the affair continues whenever time and place permit, but then, Paul's young son finds out about Rae and Rae's back-street world begins to crumble.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
John and Mary (1969)
John and Mary meet in a singles bar, sleep together, and spend the next day getting to know each other.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisHarold and Maude (1971)
A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWho Am I This Time? (1982)
Harry is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely--while on stage. Helene is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Harry's Stanley when the theater group performs A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the growing affection between Helene and Stanley, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968)
Newly-married Rebecca leaves her husband's Alsatian bed on her prized motorbike - symbol of freedom and escape - to visit her lover in Heidelberg. En route she indulges in psychedelic reveries as she relives her changing relationship with the two men.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisBonjour Tristesse (1958)
A spoiled teenager spends the summer at the French Riviera with her rich, widower, playboy father, but when his old flame resurfaces, she resolves to keep her frivolous lifestyle at all costs.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisConversation Piece (1974)
A retired professor of American origin lives a solitary life in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. He is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her lover, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and forced to rent to them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. From this point on his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants' machinations, and everybody's life takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Legend of Paul and Paula (1973)
Paul and Paula have had bad experiences with love: Paul is financially well off but has lost all affection for his wife, and Paula leads a troublesome life raising two children on her own. They meet and discover a strong passion for each other. Life seems like a dream when they're together - but their short flights from the burdens of reality are once and again interrupted by Paul's ties to family and career.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Paris Blues (1961)
During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSweet Hostage (1975)
An escaped mental patient kidnaps an illiterate teenage farm girl and takes her to his mountain hide-away, where they soon become friends and, eventually, lovers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
A Thousand Clowns (1965)
Twelve-year-old Nick lives with his Uncle Murray, a Mr.Micawber-like Dickensian character who keeps hoping something won't turn up. What turns up is a social worker, who falls in love with Murray and a bit in love with Nick. As the child welfare people try to force Murray to become a conventional man (as the price they demand for allowing him to keep Nick), the nephew, who until now has gloried in his Uncle's iconoclastic approach to life, tries to play mediator. But when he succeeds, he is alarmed by the uncle's willingness to cave in to society in order to save the relationship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)
The story of three wildly neurotic characters: a facially disfigured girl, a homosexual paraplegic, and an introvert epileptic who, after leaving the hospital, set up housekeeping together in a cottage where they support each other.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Charly (1968)
An experiment on a simpleton turns him into a genius. When he discovers what has been done to him he struggles with whether or not what was done to him was right.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFriends (1971)
Paul, a rich English boy, and Michelle, an orphaned French girl, run away from home to a remote beach. Living on their own, their friendship grows into love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Petulia?
The closest matches to Petulia are Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Four Seasons (1981) and Faces (1968). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Petulia?
People who watched Petulia most often go on to Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Four Seasons (1981) and Faces (1968).
What is the highest-rated movie like Petulia?
A Woman Under the Influence (1974), rated 7.7/10 by 592 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Petulia?
84 Charing Cross Road (1987) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Petulia?
Yes: Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Four Seasons (1981) and Faces (1968).
How are movies similar to Petulia chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Petulia, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.