Love can be strange, complicated and even downright bizarre. The portrayals of romance on the silver screen are no exception. Just in time for Valentine's Day, Host Frank Stasio talks with Marsha Gordon, film professor at North Carolina State University and Laura Boyes, film curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, about unconventional romance in the movies.
Here are some of their picks and your favorites:
The 2013 movie Her features a lonely man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falling in love with his computer's operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johannson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAquwhl304I&noredirect=1
The 2008 animated hit Wall-E featured little dialogue, but the romance blossomed between two robots.
http://youtu.be/rBmOEx3yuDg
The love between non-humans continues in the 2013 film Warm Bodies when a zombie falls for a human girl after consuming her boyfriend's brain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1AkFh3QgU
Love transcends even death in the 1990 film Truly, Madly, Deeply.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj1BlyOcmBs
Some of the unconventional romances involve people of differing ages. One listener favorite is the 1971 film Harold and Maude.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZzNlA9uZ0g
The 1950 classic Sunset Blvd shows the complexity of a May-December affair. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb_uXwPiNxc
Sometimes a crime brings a couple together. The 1973 American film Badlands is just one examples. Listeners also suggested Natural Born Killers and Bonnie & Clyde.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBZkP3H7Td4
The mystery of love is not just for adults. Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom tells the complex story of a relationship between two young runaways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBJsQJDa1_A
Sometimes it is as simple as the old phrase "opposites attract." The African Queen (1951) shows a proper missionary and a rowdy captain finding common ground.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kno7sZsqWzE
And perhaps the most iconic film of the unconventional romances is King Kong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMA5Y1pwiY
