20 best movies like An Unmarried Woman (1978)

Liz Gilbert had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having – a husband, a house and a successful career – yet like so many others, she found herself lost, confused and searching for what she really wanted in life. Newly divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy, the power of prayer in India and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali.

Just three weeks before her wedding, Lola (Greta Gerwig) finds herself suddenly without a partner when her longtime fiance, Luke (Joel Kinnaman), dumps her. With her 30th birthday looming and being forced to re-enter the New York City dating scene, she feels adrift in a cold world. She leans on her friends (Zoe Lister-Jones, Hamish Linklater) for support but, after a series of romantic humiliations, professional blunders and boozy antics, Lola realizes that she alone is in charge of her fate.

Alice Tate, mother of two, with a marriage of 16 years, finds herself falling for the handsome sax player, Joe. Stricken with a backache, she consults Dr. Yang, an oriental herbalist who realizes that her problems are not related to her back, but in her mind and heart. Dr. Yang's magical herbs give Alice wondrous powers, taking her out of well-established rut.

Feeling abandoned by her therapist who's gone on an extended vacation, beautiful Lindsay gets help with her fear of commitment from an ad hoc support group formed by other New Yorkers also left high and dry by their shrinks. But when her pals dare her to date fellow group member A.J., Lindsay begins to wonder if she's finally found her match.

Divorced and demoralised, Amy Minsky’s prospects look bleak when she is condemned to move back in with her parents at the age of 35. Everyone wants to help but, as her patience level with advice is plummeting, a bold teenage boy enters her life, igniting her last bit of self-esteem.

After her husband, Carl, suddenly leaves, Joline travels from New York to Texas to track him down. Although Joline tries to remain upbeat, she is discouraged when she discovers that Carl already has a new girlfriend, the lovely Carmen. Familiarizing herself with Carl's new home and friends, Joline gets company in the form of her brother, Jay. Will Joline win Carl back, or are there other romantic possibilities on her horizon?

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

Celeste and Jesse met in high school and got married young. They laugh at the same jokes and finish each other’s sentences. They are forever linked in their friends’ minds as the perfect couple – she, a high-powered businesswoman and budding novelist; he, a free spirit who keeps things from getting boring. Their only problem is that they have decided to get divorced. Can their perfect relationship withstand this minor setback?

We'll Never Have Paris is a clumsy and at once human account of screwing up on a transcontinental level in a noble effort to win back "the one."

Marty, a butcher who lives in the Bronx with his mother is unmarried at 34. Good-natured but socially awkward he faces constant badgering from family and friends to get married but has reluctantly resigned himself to bachelorhood. Marty meets Clara, an unattractive school teacher, realising their emotional connection, he promises to call but family and friends try to convince him not to.

A writer for a greeting card company learns the true meaning of loneliness when he comes home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man.

Xavier is a 40-year-old father of two who still finds life very complicated. When the mother of his children moves to New York, he can't bear them growing up far away from him and so he decides to move there as well.

David, a struggling comedy writer fresh off from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves from New York City to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and much-younger sisters for the first time in ten years, he feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother’s health declines, David frantically tries to extract meaning from this horrible experience and convince everyone (including himself) that he's "doing okay.”

When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, Frankie develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.

A rebellious young woman with cerebral palsy leaves India to study in New York. On her journey of self-discovery, she unexpectedly falls in love.

An urban office worker finds that paper airplanes are instrumental in meeting a girl in ways he never expected.

Max Simkin repairs shoes in the same New York shop that has been in his family for generations. Disenchanted with the grind of daily life, Max stumbles upon a magical heirloom that allows him to step into the lives of his customers and see the world in a new way. Sometimes walking in another man's shoes is the only way one can discover who they really are.

After getting into a car accident while drunk on the day of her sister's wedding, Gwen Cummings is given a choice between prison or a rehab center. She chooses rehab, but is extremely resistant to taking part in any of the treatment programs they have to offer, refusing to admit that she has an alcohol addiction.

Estranged from her family, Franny returns home when an accident leaves her brother comatose. Retracing his life as an aspiring musician, she tracks down his favorite musician, James Forester. Against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s music scene, Franny and James develop an unexpected relationship and face the realities of their lives.

Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.

While attending a retrospect of his work, a filmmaker recalls his life and his loves: the inspirations for his films.

Marianne (34) discovers that her boyfriend Håkon is having an affair. Supported by her best friend's revenge tips and wisdom, Marianne stumbles into her new life where she discovers that coziness is overrated and having fun is what matters.

In 1950s Ireland and New York, young Ellis Lacey has to choose between two men and two countries.

The life you love may be your own.... The wife of a much older man finds herself attracted to their neighbour's son, who is closer to her age.

The lives of several couples and singles in New York intertwine over the course of New Year's Eve.

Late Bloomers stars Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt as a married couple pulled apart by the threat of old age. Each reacts in a different way: Hurt’s distinguished architect chases after his glory days, while Rossellini’s housewife installs handrails about the house.

After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.

After a blow to the head, Abby decides she can't do it anymore. Her life just can't be only about the house, the kids and the wife. She needs more: she needs to be Eleanor.

New York City is full of lonely hearts seeking the right match, and what Alice, Robin, Lucy, Meg, Tom and David all have in common is the need to learn how to be single in a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love.

After his wife leaves him for another man, Jacques hires a housekeeper, Laura, to keep his Paris apartment in order. As he starts increasing her hours and spending more time with her on her days off, Jacques is torn between the pleasure of Laura's company, and the headache that such an intrusion brings to his new domain of singlehood.

Substance-addicted Hollywood actress, Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who still treats her like a child. Despite these and other problems, Suzanne begins to see the funny side of her situation, and also realises that not only do daughters have mothers—mothers do too.

A successful artist, weary of Parisian life and on the verge of divorce, returns to the country to live in his childhood house. He needs someone to make a real vegetable garden again out of the wilderness it has become. The gardener happens to be a former schoolfriend. A warm, fruitful conversation starts between the two men.

Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, is 35 years old and still trying to find a purpose for his life. He and his wife are barely getting by financially and Aidan passes his time by fantasizing about being the great futuristic Space-Knight he'd always dreamed he'd be as a little kid. When his ailing father can no longer afford to pay for private school for his two kids and the only available public school is on its last legs, Aidan reluctantly agrees to attempt to home-school them. Through teaching them about life his way, Aidan gradually discovers some of the parts of himself he couldn't find.

For his French-class assignment, a high school student weaves his family history in a news story involving terrorism, and goes on to invite an Internet audience in on the resulting controversy.

Despite his fame, Taillandier has suddenly stopped painting. Deeply depressed, the sixty-year-old decides to go away. He has no clear goal and explains nothing to his close friends. During his travels, he has a strange encounter with Marylou, a wild teenager who was rejected by her mother. The lost girl and the man at the end of his tether will travel together awhile. Finally living like a father and daughter, at peace.

Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.

When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love.

The study of a marriage. Jo has five children and husband number two when she meets writer Jake Armitage. She leaves this husband to marry Jake, and his career takes off. A few years and at least one child later, Jo is deeply depressed, breaking down in the middle of Harrods. After psychiatric care and the prospect of a new house in the country, she gets better; then, she is pregnant again, and this time Jake objects. Jo consents to an abortion and sterilization in the belief it will make her marriage happy again, but afterwards she learns ugly truths about Jake.

After an accident leaves her a paraplegic, a former soap opera star struggles to recover both emotionally and mentally, until she meets her newest nurse, who has struggles of her own.

Joe and Lucy are roommates and best friends. Lucy, whose love life is embarrassingly dull, convinces Joe, who is infatuated with a neighbor he's never met, that if they don't have stable romances within a month, they must jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

An international soccer star is on his way to sign a multimillion dollar contract when something happens that brings his career to an abrupt end. A beautiful waitress, struggling to make it in New York City, discovers something about herself that she's unprepared for. In one irreversible moment, their lives are turned upside down.

In this film, we see the world through the eyes of main character Justice, a young African-American poet. A mail carrier invites a few friends along for a long overnight delivery run.

When Duffy Bergman, a New York cartoonist, meets Meg Lloyd, a gourmet chef, he discovers the love of his life and they marry -- yet love alone isn't enough to make them happy. Meg decides she wants to have a baby, a goal that initially makes Duffy frantic, but soon becomes his most important desire as well. When they are unable to have a baby, Meg begins concentrating on her career and the two slowly drift apart -- eventually separating. Later, when Duffy is speaking at a convention of the Delta Gamma sorority, he reveals that the Delta Gamma girls have always been his dream girls -- his Love Goddesses. There he meets the young and uninhibited Delta Gamma girl, Daphne Delillo. When Daphne moves to New York to work as a network sports reporter, their mutual attraction and Daphne's spontaneity spark an adventurous new relationship for Duffy. Now Duffy must decide which is more valuable to him -- the relationship he has given up, or the relationship he has always dreamed of having.

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

Alchoholic former country singer Mac Sledge makes friends with a young widow and her son. The friendship enables him to find inspiration to resume his career.

As the devoutly single Don Johnston is dumped by his latest girlfriend, he receives an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him.

Seemingly mild-mannered businessman Edmond Burke visits a fortuneteller and hears a remark that spurs him to leave his wife abruptly and seek what is missing from his life. Encounters with strangers and unsavory people weaken the barriers encompassing his long-suppressed rage, until Edmond explodes in violence.

British artist Colin Ware discovers that his fiancée, Vera, is going to marry another man. Distraught and despondent, he gets on a plane for America and ends up in the tiny town of Hope in New England. At first, Colin is depressed, but he soon finds more than a shoulder to cry on when his innkeepers introduce him to Mandy, a beautiful nurse. All's going well and Colin has almost forgotten his old flame until Vera shows up with a surprise of her own.

Two students at neighboring colleges get swept up in first love. Pookie Adams, a kooky misfit with no family or friends, clings to the quiet and studious Jerry, who has the ability to make a choice of living in Pookie's private world or be accepted by the society that Pookie rejects. Unwittingly, it is through their awkward relationship that Pookie prepares Jerry for the world of "weirdos" that she doesn't fit into.

Hackman plays a New York professor who wants a change in his life, and plans to get married to his girlfriend and move to California. His mother understands his need to get away, but warns him that moving so far away could be hard on his father. Just before the wedding, the mother dies. Hackman's sister (who has been disowned by their father for marrying a Jewish man) advises him to live his own life, and not let himself be controlled by their father.