Celebrate Cuffing Season with these 9 Freak4Freak Couples

Nothing screams romance like *checks notes * blackmail, breaking and entering, social awkwardness, and being in the cuck chair while your wife fucks your homunculus.

1. Possession

Ok, we'll start with the homunculus one since I'm sure that's what you're all here for.

This Polish film directed by Andrzej Żuławski in 1981 is a horror cult classic, and one of my favorite movies of all time. Sam Neill (who I adore? I never understood why everyone's Jurassic Park crush was Jeff Goldblum instead) and Isabelle Adjani both individually and as co-actors deliver some of the best performances in cinematic history.

Featuring a confusing, strange, psychological horror plot and a deeply dysfunctional marriage (I think Żuławski wrote this after a divorce), calling Mark and Anna's relationship romantic is probably a deeply polarizing opinion. # Canceled # Youtube apology

But actually: no Youtube apology for you! This movie is DEEPLY romantic to me and Mark and Anna are one of my favorite fictional couples of all time. Little known fun fact that Stevie Nicks actually had a premonition of Possession four years before its conception and wroteSilver Springs about it. Truth. So real. It's not about Lindsey Buckingham, it's about when you find out your wife is cheating on you with a pile of blood and flesh in her spare apartment and then it slowly starts to evolve into your doppelganger and she makes eye contact with you the whole time she's having sex with it.

(And also you commit intimate pain rituals with an electric meat knife. And Sam Neill makes some of the most compelling acting decisions of all acting choices ever. And you crash out with your groceries in a subway.)

Another highlight is the bizarre mix of accents: the three main characters are played by a New Zealander who at that point had not trained the Kiwi out of his voice, a French woman, and a German man. Subtitles recommended.

tldr; "you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you" (<-- threat), mutual insanity, anti-divorcecore, crashouts.

2. Sanctuary

I show this to everyone. Also highly underrated, especially since Margaret Qualley is such an It Girl post-Substance? This movie made me fall in love with her as an actress: she's fearless, unforgiving, not afraid to be messy and ugly (as much as she even can be) and strange. Her character Rebecca, a dominatrix, is one of my favorite characters of all time.

I sort of don't even want to say any plot details to spoil anything about this? I'll just say this is another great example (like a few others on this list) of a movie labeled a psychological thriller when TBH it's sort of more like a unique rom-com.

Highlights: incredible acting from both sides. One of the best scenes of all time, set to "Heaven Must Have Sent You" by Bonnie Pointer. So many lines and little microexpressions/body language habits of Rebecca are so addictive that I just, like, downloaded them into my emotes collection after watching this. And the ending really is so romantic.

tldr; Margaret Qualley erotic Pledge of Allegiance scene, failcouple of all time, and fun fact? This whole movie was filmed with only 2 actors and a single set.

3. Watching the Detectives

Is this movie good? I honestly don't know. It is commited to its bit, I'll say that. Its leads, Lucy Liu and Cillian Murphy, are gems, and there's so many eccentricies to this film that you sort of have to respect its audacity if nothing else.

A bit of a spin on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, Lucy Liu's Violet is a whirlwind of a girl who sweeps into certified movie nerd and video store owner Neil's life. Relentlessy confused by his fixation on watching movies instead of, like, just doing the exciting things he's watching on TV irl, she drags him into (usually criminal?) adventures while Cillian Murphy does a great job acting out panic attacks.

The "Just Kidding About the Breakup" cake shot above is one of my favorite screencaps ever, Violet dresses like a Disney Channel star whose trying to get all her clothes onto an airplane without going over the 50lb suitcase limit, and there's a truly incredible scene of Neil crying while running around a baseball diamond. What more could you want????

tldr; MPDG, guy who should probably call the cops on the romantic interest but instead falls in love with her, heroine who def needs lamotrigine, rock concert.

4. Amélie

Could any freak4freak list truly be accurate without an homage to the og's?

A French film mixing rom-com with magical realism with character study, our protagonist Amélie is an eccentric but withdrawn young woman who spends her time daydreaming and eating creme brulee.

The romance plot comes in later in Amélie's character arc: she stumbles upon the photo album of an (also strange and reclusive) young man named Nino who collects the photos forgotten by strangers in the slots of photo booths. Their cat-and-mouse game as she withholds the album and grapples with her attraction to him (but fear of letting her guard down) is sweet, and it makes sense in many ways why this film is such a classic.

tldr; autistic couple ftw, the definition of Intricate Rituals, much less blood and gore than some other films on this list if that helps.

5. Mr. Right

Criminally underrated. I've never seen a single person mention this movie, like, ever. But it's perfect? Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell, both comedic geniuses in their own right, clearly had so much fun making this and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if half of it is ad-libbed.

Kendrick plays essentially a Unicorn Frappucino in the shape of a human woman, whose exuberance and childish whimsy is so intense it actually skips over irritating straight into masterfully absurdist. This mastery is also so well-done on the film's part that her romance with Sam Rockwell's hitman character is neither creepy nor patronizing and instead just straight up extremely awesome.

tldr; Sam Rockwell is an assassin who assassinates the people who hire him because killing is bad and Anna Kendrick is Anna Kendrick. And they're adorable. Also "My Type" by Saint Motel plays at one point.

6. Rhinestone

If you thought Mr. Right was a deep cut, think again. This 1984 lost relic of time features Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton as the most unexpected but incredible couple of all time, featuring not just one or two but four Dolly/Stallone duets.

In a truly inspired twist on the My Fair Lady plot-- which is in itself a Pygmalion and Galatea reference, by the way-- Dolly Parton's country singer character makes a bet with her sleazy boss that she can take any guy off the NYC street and turn him into a cowboy singing sensation in 2 weeks.

And, of course-- like a knight in shining armor-- then arrives Sylvester Stallone as a NYC taxi driver who can't sing!* Cue two weeks of Tennessee country music bootcamp, bar fights, adorableness, and... enemies to lovers? Rivals? Reluctant partners to friends to enemies to lovers to friends to lovers to band members? Idk. I love them.

tldr; possibly the best movie ever made. I need a Dolly/Stallone reunion, please.

*He also can't drive, which is how he ends up going along with all this anyway. He needs cash to pay for the taxi cab that he literally just crashed. King behavior.

7. Chungking Express

This 1994 Wong Kar-Wai film stars Faye Wong as a waitress at a local cafe and Tony Leung as one of her regulars, referred to as Cop 663. When Faye (yes, the same name as the actress) eventually comes into possession of his apartment key after his girlfriend comes by to drop off a breakup letter and her extra keys, Cop 663 tells her to hold onto the letter for him for a bit and....Faye takes some liberties.

Specifically, she breaks into his house and decides his life is hella depressing (true). In her strides to fix this, she anonymously and illegally deep-cleans his apartment, fills it with stuffed animals, and even puts more goldfish into his goldfish tank. He is not turned off by this. Romance of all time.

tldr; INCREDIBLE soundtrack (its usage of "California Dreamin' is one of the best introjections of music in film ever imo), incredible weirdo couple, incredible Faye Wong.

8. Gone Girl

For this one I'm going to have to reference the book (authored by Gillian Flynn),which I absolutely adore and which has a fairly different take on Nick and Amy.

Gone Girl the movie tends to get heralded more as a "good for her!" film, wherein Amy enacts revenge upon her unlikable husband (his unlikability pretty much encapsulated by the infamous scene above of him panicking under pressure and smiling next to the missing poster of his wife on national television). Or, for other audience members, it's a psychological thriller about an evil woman with no redemptive qualities (boring! Boo! Tomatoes! You don't appreciate her).

But, despite the fact this is a great movie adaptation, it simply can't capture the interiority of Nick that we get through his narration in the book. Part of this might be Ben Affleck's perpetually vacant facial expressions. Part of it is the inescapable consequence of book-to-movie adaptation. But regardless Gone Girl loses out on one of the best, most compelling parts of the story, which is that Nick and Amy deserve each other.

I won't spoil anything by adding quotes here. But, as fun as the "good for her" interpretation is, there's something undeniably riveting about the idea that Gone Girl is a love story.

tldr; match made in hell, hand in unlovable hand, Silver-Springs-core, many buckets of fake blood, heterosexual Neil Patrick Harris.

9. Secretary

Another infamous couple of the Weirdo film canon! Often heralded as the movie 50 Shades of Grey copied, Secretary explores a BDSM relationship between secretary Lee Holloway and her boss Edward Grey (alright, E.L. James, could you be any more obvious).

Unlike 50 Shades, this movie skirts the edges of cringiness by leaning into it. It doesn't try to be erotic for every audience member: how could it be? The eroticism of this film arguably doesn't come from the kink/sexual acts themselves, but by seeing how Lee and Edward react to them and how important they are. In particular, James Spader's moral crisis about sexually dominating Lee (despite it being consensual) is extremely well-acted, and makes Lee's own arc of sexual empowerment and confidence so much more meaningful.

tldr; the og BDSM office romance, two social awkward and vaguely offputting weirdos falling in love, and James Spader in his natural element of psychosexual romance (ah, Crash...).

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hope u all enjoyed xoxo. we match the freak we think we deserve or whatever