20 Movies Like Malena: Top Picks for Drama Lovers

Malèna (2000) by Giuseppe Tornatore is a beautiful classic that you should see if you haven’t already. Its cinematic power and simple complexity will blow your mind. It’s possible that some of you have read this story before and know about the different themes that make it both innocent and cruel at the same time. In this movie, which is set in rural Sicily in the 1940s, the main character’s beauty is her curse, and the men are crazy with lust and desire, and the women are viciously jealous of her. Renato, on the other hand, is 13 years old when he has sexual awakening and coming-of-age dreams that turn into loving and caring for Malena.

Movies Like Malena – Discover Similar Films:

It’s almost summer again, and love is in the air. There are many kinds of love in the world, from a crush to a partner to a secret lover. People also say that the world loves a lover. Is that really true, though?

What about the close ties between adults and children that are illegal and generally looked down upon? This kind of love is not only looked down upon, it is also illegal, and people who should have known better have been jailed for it. On our planet, there is no room for love between an adult and a child that shows itself through closeness.

The Untouchable Love

But there is one form of art that explores this taboo love theme without any holds barred: film. Take the 2000 movie Malèna by Giuseppe Tornatore as an example. In a movie set in a beautiful Italian town, a young boy falls in love with a sensual woman who lives in a strict, traditional neighborhood. The movie is a gem, telling a very complicated story in a way that is brilliantly simple. However, some people may not agree with the sexual themes it explores.

It’s sexual, mean, and heartbreaking—a great picture of how people feel about love, no matter what age. Multiple movies from different countries and times have told stories about relationships between teens and adults. This subgenre is not new. The movie got great reviews, which shows that there are people who want to learn more about forbidden love through the safety of their screen.

Take a look at our list of suggested movies like Malena if you liked how deep and powerful this one was for you. You can watch some of these movies like Malena, on Amazon Prime, Netflix, or Hulu.

The Top 20 Movies Like Malena For 2024:

Y Tu Mamá También

This movie shows the often crazy path of finding out who you are and your sexual urges as a teenager. Two best friends whose girls are going on vacation abroad are able to get a woman who just found out her husband was cheating on her to join them on a road trip.

The trip turns into a journey of self-discovery, teaching lessons about sexuality and friendship. This is by no means the only movie on this list where a child is the attacker. Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece is a thought-provoking work of art that touches on topics that many people would find uncomfortable. A Rotten Tomatoes score of 92%, on the other hand, makes the return clear.

In the Heat of the Sun

This movie is about a group of young friends who live in China during the culture change. The movie tells the story of a very hot summer when a young teenage boy develops feelings for an older girl, but she ends up falling in love with his friend instead, which makes him sad.

This Chinese movie, written and directed by Jiang Wen, is partly based on Wang Shuo’s 1991 book Wild Beast. It has gotten a lot of good reviews, and even the famous director Quentin Tarantino has joined the list of fans.

The Legend of 1900

Giuseppe Tornatore’s romantic musical The Legend of 1900 is about a baby boy who is found on an ocean ship in 1900 and grows up to be a singing genius. His fame spreads to land, though, and his friend tries to get him to come ashore so that he can be successful, but this genius doesn’t want to live away from the ocean.

Without giving too much away, IMDB gives this movie with Tim Roth and Pruitt Taylor an 8/10 grade. It was nominated for and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. So, if you like watching love stories with exciting music, this movie has everything you could want.

The Dreamers

Following the story of a young American student in Paris during the student riots of 1968, the story shows what happens when the American student makes friends with a French brother and sister through their shared love of movies.

But unlike Malèna, this movie doesn’t show a connection between an adult and a child, but it still shows a kind of love that is disturbing and uncomfortable. The Dreamers, starring Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, and Eva Green, is another great movie by Bernardo Bertolucci. The dialogue brings the movie to life with laughter and joy, even though some of the plot turns are surprising.

Green Chair

This South Korean romance drama by Cheol-Su Park is another reminder that forbidden love doesn’t just happen in one culture. It’s about a divorced mother who is found guilty of seducing a child. They are at their wits’ end and run away to the friend of the woman, where things quickly get worse because they didn’t expect it.

Green Chair follows these two lovers as they deal with their sexuality, their attraction to each other, and the fact that most people don’t like them.

Prime

The romantic comedy Prime stars Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep, and Bryan Greenberg. It’s about a career-driven executive who falls in love with a young painter. But this young painter is also the son of her doctor, which is not good.

Prime goes into the world of the elite and paints a funny picture of the secrets they hide while asking a tough question: should this love be allowed? This shows that forbidden love isn’t just something that happens to regular people. In this movie written and directed by Ben Younger, you can see how it ends.

Amarcord

Many people think this is one of Frederico Fellini’s best movies ever. Through the eyes of a young boy named Titta, Amarcord tells the story of a fascist Italy set in a small town by the sea in Italy.

From his relationship with his family to the wild promiscuity of the women in town, the movie shows how people behaved and didn’t care in Italy when fascism was in power. Amarcord is a lesson in both history and the human situation. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and has an iMDb score of 8/10.

I Could Never Be Your Woman

It’s always fun to try something new with someone you love and trust. Things don’t go as planned, though, when a mother falls in love with a younger guy at the same time as her daughter’s first love. Mother Nature steps in.

Amy Heckerling wrote and directed I Could Never Be Your Woman, which stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Saoirse Ronan. It is one of the lighter movies on this list, but it is definitely worth your time.

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Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

For Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, get your pitchforks ready, because this one is a doozy. When a worried husband tries to help his sad wife by finding her a lover (yes, you read that right), things go wrong when she falls in love with a 13-year-old math genius who is being picked on and says she wants to have his baby.

It doesn’t get any crazier than that. If the almost crazy story of Get Out Your Handkerchiefs doesn’t turn you off, the ending will definitely be worth it.

The Second Wife

The Second Wife is a comedy about love that takes place in the early 1960s. When a single mother who got married again and couldn’t stand her new husband gets arrested, she starts to love her stepson. Their friendship slowly changes into something else, something that even die-hard movie fans will find hard to handle.

The theme isn’t new to Italian movies, but this sneaky film adds something new to the table that makes it stand out from the rest. This rare movie, directed by Ugo Chiti, talks about incest and asks viewers to decide for themselves where the line should be between genetic relationships and other relationships.

All Things Fair

All Things Fair also takes place during the Second World War, like Malèna. A 15-year-old boy named Stig meets his teacher, a 37-year-old woman named Viola. The story takes place in Sweden in 1943. Stig falls in love with Viola because she is beautiful and mature, and she falls in love with him because he is young and innocent.

When Viola finds out that her husband, who gets drunk a lot, is cheating on her, she starts seeing Stig. But hiding their relationship, which is against the rules, is harder than they thought it would be, and things happen that neither of them could have expected.

Malicious

It was directed by Salvatore Samperi and is not the same as the 2008 movie with the same name. This highly sexual love comedy contrasts the knowledge of old age with the joy of youth.

An old man, his two kids, and his beautiful maid all fall in love with each other in Malicious. Each wants her for themselves and tries to get her to like them by using their own tricks. Malicious is surprisingly a lot more than what it seems like from the story. It sounds like another weird movie about wooing and trickery, which is a really common theme.

Heimliche Liebe: Der Schüler und die Postbotin

Heimliche Liebe stars Kostja Ullmann and Marie Bäumer as a 17-year-old boy who falls in love with a 37-year-old woman from a different social class. She is also married. On the other hand, things don’t quite go as planned. Will he get the thing he really wants?

People who saw the movie loved it, and Kostja Ullmann’s performance was called a lesson in acting. Like many of the other movies on this list, this 2005 romance thriller is about love that isn’t allowed to happen.

S for Sex

S for Sex (previously called Chaleurs) is a very dark and sexual coming of age story about a teen who has sex with the family maid while having sexual feelings for his mother. When his father starts having an affair with the maid, the story gets more complicated.

The plot should tell you what kind of movie it is by itself. One movie that is a lot like Malena is S For Sex. It has a lot of uncomfortable sex scenes. From Daniel Daërt comes this sneaky movie that will make you think long after the credits roll.

Sentimental Education

The story is about Áurea, an older, emotional woman who makes friends with Áureo, a teenager. Because they enjoy being with each other, they both open up and start talking about things that are close to faith, mysticism, and even life itself. As their relationship grows and they can’t imagine being apart, Áureo’s mother steps in and is angry.

Sentimental Education is one of the less scary movies on this list. It’s about what happens when an older woman dates a young girl.

Alex Is Lovesick

This love story, which is also called Alex Holeh Ahavah, takes place in Israel in the 1950s. At 13, Alex falls in love with Mimi, the new girl in his class. This is the story of the movie. When Alex’s aunt Lola shows up, though, everything changes. He falls in love with his aunt, and she seems happy to oblige.

Boaz Davidson, the director, does a great job of explaining the exact conditions that ruled the country in the 1950s. This makes the love story on the screen even more moving.

Seduction

Instead of the usual older woman leading a younger guy on, Seduction shows a different situation that makes you think. When a man comes back to the city, he meets up with his old lover. But her fifteen-year-old daughter starts to flirt with him, and soon they are having an affair.

When the woman starts to think that her daughter is seeing him, things get tense between the guy and his lover. Most of the time, Seduction handles itself with ease, but in the second half, it trades that for raunchy scenes.

Charlie and the Hooker

The main character in Charlie and the Hooker is Curro, a 16-year-old boy who is sick of being a virgin. The story is also known as Mi Primer Pecado. When he thinks about lust instead of logic, which is always a bad idea, he falls deeply in love with a prostitute ten years his senior.

He comes up with a plan to make her fall in love with him because he can’t get close to her. What is it? He gives her money to be with him. Does his plan work out the way he wants it to? You might find out something new.

Little Children

This movie takes place in the present, which is different from many others on this list. It also has a great cast, including Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, and Jennifer Connelly, who all play important roles in its success and quality. It tells the story of how different characters, including a pedophile, a shamed former police officer, and two people in a tense marriage who fall in love, meet.

The movie gives a smart and in-depth look at human uncertainty in all its forms by showing each character in great detail without labeling any of them as good or bad. A really great movie that treats a lot of different topics with respect and honor.

The Reader

One of the best movies about a relationship between two people who are very different in age, and one of them is too young to be in the relationship. If Renato wants to be sexual with someone in “Malèna,” they never actually do anything together.

But the sexual strain in “The Reader” is very real, physical, and between the two people. Hanna, a 36-year-old woman, guides and explores Michael’s sexual awakening. Michael, a 15-year-old boy, reads books to Hanna before they sleep together under her house. But things get a lot more difficult when historical events are woven into the love story and tragedy that the movie tells with all its beauty.

Conclusion:

These movies all deeply show what it’s like to be human, whether it’s through the eerie beauty of Malèna, the emotional depth of Atonement, or the beautiful storytelling of Il Postino. They show us how fragile love, beauty, and relationships between people can be, especially when there is trouble. These movies will help you understand the subtleties of life, love, and war better, which is what made Malèna such an amazing movie.

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