Scythe and Sound

Laura: "I want to die"

Alec: "If you die, you'd forget me. And I want to be remembered"

Two strangers meet on a railway platform. They have noticed each other during their daily commute to and from work. They connect, converse and fall in love. But nothing happens. They are both married to other people.

This is the basic premise of Noel Coward's play Brief Encounter brought to the screen in 1946 by director David Lean, where love grows between Laura Jesson and Dr. Alec Harvey without any concrete physical presence. The romance lies in the comfort, longing and safe haven that the characters emotionally and mentally create at the (fictional) Milford Station. It lies in a secret that only they are privy to.

Brief Encounter may not be the ideal Valentine's Day flick but nonetheless it is one of the most romantic movies I've ever seen and would highly recommend.

On the other hand I can be a sucker for films like Love Actually and Pretty Woman (which I'll watch with my girlfriends) where love doesn't exist in a vague cerebral space, and things actually happen. This Valentine's Day I would recommend these typical and not-so-typical films d'amour you should check out (if you haven't already):

Let The Right One In: Why should you watch this Swedish film with vampires (not of the hokey Twilight variety)? Because it's a beautifully told story about Oskar, a boy who is constantly bullied and Eli, a little girl with a secret (you can guess what it is) who find and create an amazing and honest kinship together - Wonderfully filmed and wonderfully told.

Amélie: Jean-Pierre Jeunet's gem of a film that launched the career of Audrey Tatou, crème brûlée and an adventurous garden gnome, is a movie about finding oneself, no matter how quirky and colorful, which Amélie Poulain and Nino Quincampoix) ultimately achieve when they meet after a game of cat-and-mouse.

In The Mood For Love: Wong Kar Wai paints a beautiful portrait of Hong Kong in the 60s where the small and potentially claustrophobic apartments seamlessly expand as Maggie Chung and Tony Leung's characters find solace within their walls and in each other. It follows the vein of Brief Encounter where a romance burgeons in the things unsaid, where invisible actions speak louder than even the beautiful and haunting theme song.

Pretty In Pink: With a tagline that goes "He's good. She's good. He's just Duckie" you know that this John Hughes-scribed film involves a love triangle, with lots of baby pink, hairspray and vinyl. An 80s classic, Molly Ringwald's character Andie Walsh goes through the loops of high school affections as she dates a rich yet kind playboy, only to realize later that her dorky best friend is in love with her as well.

Say Anything: A boom box has never enjoyed the limelight in the way it has in this Cameron Crowe/John Cusack classic. A classmate of mine recently summed up this movie by telling me that Say Anything made "him behave like an idiot for the love of a woman". Yes, to know Lloyd Dobler is to love him. And ladies, maybe we'll all get to meet a Lloyd Dobler soon.

Casablanca: This is one of my favorite films of all time, where Rick's Café Américain sets the scene for politics, romantic tension and reconciliation and some of the most memorable dialogue in the history of film from "Here's looking at you, kid" to "We'll always have Paris". Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, the film's cynical and dashing protagonist who suddenly come across his ex, the gorgeous Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) who needs Rick's help to escape to America with her husband Victor Laszlo (Peter Henreid).

While Gary Marshall's film star studded Valentine's Day invades theaters on February 12th, line up your Netflix cue with some of these classic and modern romances and you'll find yourself thinking about the way you commute, the last song that made you smile, that funny pick up line, a lost love and maybe that someone you should call up.