20 best movies like His Secret Life (2001)

This film focuses on contemporary 30- and 40-somethings trying to make sense of their lives in an age in which the old certainties have disappeared. Lorenzo and Davide make their lives together within a circle that includes Antonio and Angelica, married with children; Nerval and her policeman husband.

The story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s, taking an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city and nation in denial.

A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie, the other a gay man, Robert - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.

Michael and Robert, two gay men living in Brooklyn, spend their last day together before Robert leaves for Africa on work assignment. Michael still has feelings for his friend Nick, who has AIDS.

Based on the autobiographical novel, the tempestuous 6-year relationship between Liberace and his (much younger) lover, Scott Thorson, is recounted.

Kuba attends an art opening with his girlfriend of two years and bumps into Mikal. The connection between these two young men is instantaneous and intoxicating, and despite opposition from all sides, he allows Mikal into his life. The results go beyond anything he could have imagined. This intimate and bold second feature from Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski captures the often-complicated consequences of finding love where others do not want it.

An emotionally and sexually charged journey through the love, addiction, and friendship of two men. Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers—compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.

Maurice, a reticent young homeless man, somehow manages to get by in Brooklyn; he spends his nights in parked cars until he finds himself at Bizarre, an underground club renowned for its burlesque shows. Maurice is fascinated by the club’s playful revues celebrating self-determined sexuality and creative otherness, and the two female club owners both adore him. He soon becomes a part of their self-selected family, and begins to bond with introverted Luka. But Maurice turns his back on Luka’s growing affection. Running away from his true emotions he drifts aimlessly through the city. He tries to find his feet at a boxing club, where he meets Charlie. Unable to withstand the pressure of his repressed feelings, Maurice unleashes a mounting foment of emotions, pervaded by tenderness and menace.

In this lively French remake of Humpday, best buds reunite and revive their friendship on a questionable dare. Can two straight guys really make a gay sex film, together?

Manu arrives in Paris, in the early days of AIDS, at the beginning of the 1980s. He strikes up a friendship with Adrien, a wealthy doctor in his early fifties, who introduces him to Sarah and Mehdi, a young couple.

Eugenio offers his childhood friend Martin a work for the summer. With a game of power and desire a relationship starts to grow that goes beyond their friendship.

Francis is a young gay man, Marie is a young straight woman and the two of them are best friends -- until the day the gorgeous Nicolas walks into a Montreal coffee shop. The two friends, instantly and equally infatuated, compete for Nicolas' indeterminate affections, a conflict that climaxes when the trio visit the vacation home of Nicolas' mother. The frothy comedy unfolds through narrative, fantasy sequences and confessional monologues.

Two Navy fighter pilots find themselves in the midst of a forbidden relationship throwing their lives and careers into disarray.

A look at the life of French designer Yves Saint Laurent from the beginning of his career in 1958 when he met his lover and business partner, Pierre Berge.

From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.

Carla and Bruno believe they have answers for everything until Rai appears in their lives, an attractive and mysterious young who lives outside the rules. In this story about love and friendship, boundaries dissolve by the rhythm of funky and break to offer a provocative, exciting and deeply touching vision about romantic relationships.

This is the story of human beings who know exactly what they'd do if they were somebody else, but can't handle being themselves very well, who are very simply struggling to find out who they are.

Malik has a lot on his plate when he returns home to Tunisia after living in France. He's processing his father's death, he can't come out to his mother, and his childhood anxieties have resurfaced. But all of Malik's problems seem to fade away when he falls for Bilal, the dreamy houseboy at his mother's bourgeois estate.

It is 1984. Frank (Layke Anderson) is a determined English teenager who runs away from high school to find an alternative gay lifestyle in Amsterdam. He finds a home and a job at the "House of Boys", a bar-cum-brothel run by a strict Madame (Udo Kier) who has an eye for what his punters crave. Frank works his way up from barman to on-stage dancer and falls in love with some of his housemates Jake (Ben Northover). The first intimations of what is described as 'the gay cancer', casts a long shadow over Frank's tight-knit group of friends. Yet despite the troubles that cloud the hopes and dreams of young Frank, his perseverance, along with support from a willing doctor (Stephen Fry), will carry him through. House of Boys is a glamorous, colourful coming-of-age story that lifts the lid on an exciting world of sex and music, where deep passions suddenly turn into a struggle for courage.

Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.

Szabolcs plays in a German football team, as does Bernard. They are roommates, best friends, inseparable. A lost match makes him reconsider his life and he goes back to Hungary in hope for more simplicity. Yet his solitude does not last long. Soon after his arrival he meets Áron and a mutual attraction between the two boys develops when suddenly Szabolcs receives an unexpected phone call from Bernard: he has arrived to Hungary...

Three friends form a bond over the year, Johnathan is gay, Clare is straight and Bobby is neither, instead he loves the people he loves. As their lives go on there is tension and tears which culminate in a strong yet fragile friendship between the three.

New Jersey car mechanic Stacie Andree and her police detective girlfriend Laurel Hester both battle to secure Hester's pension benefits after she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Mattia is about to move to Madrid by his boyfriend Eduard. When the day before leaving for Spain, Eduard announces his arrival in Rome to know the "laws", Mattia must choose whether to finally come clean with his companion, or confess to being a formidable liar.

A couple's visit with their son takes a dramatic turn when the father tells him he plans on leaving his mother.

A seemingly ideal marriage is thrown into embarrassing turmoil in Patrice Chéreau's period drama, based on the short story The Return by Joseph Conrad.

The story of Nathan, a young teenager who tries to flourish in a romantic relationship with neighbour Roy. The two young men will have to face the brutal reality of the rural south of the United States in the late 1970s.

Summertime. A cruising spot for men, tucked away on the shores of a lake. Franck falls in love with Michel, an attractive, potent and lethally dangerous man. Franck knows this, but wants to live out his passion anyway.

A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.

In Moscow in 1983, an American journalist interviews Guy Bennett, who recalls his last year at public school, fifty years before, and how it contributed to him becoming a spy.

Set in the beautiful high Pyrenees in south-west France, Damien lives with his mother Marianne, a doctor, while his father, a pilot, is on a tour of duty abroad with the French military. At school, Damien is bullied by Thomas, who lives in the farming community up in the mountains, nut learns to fight back. The boys find themselves living together when Marianne invites Thomas to come and stay with them while his mother is ill in hospital. Damien must learn to live with the boy who terrorised him.

In Los Angeles, Max Carlyle makes a good living directing commercials and has a happy home life with his wife, Mimi, and two children. When Carlyle travels to New York City to visit his friend Charlie, who has been diagnosed with AIDS, he has repeat run-ins with a beautiful woman, Karen, and eventually sleeps with her. Though he goes home the next day and doesn't return until a year later, Carlyle's infidelity still lingers.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

Steve Russell is a small-town cop. Bored with his bland lifestyle, Russell turns to fraud as a means of shaking things up. Before long, Russell's criminal antics have landed him behind bars, where he encounters the charismatic Phillip Morris. Smitten, Russell devotes his entire life to being with Morris regardless of the consequences.

After a decade of living in San Francisco, Jesse is forced to move back to his Midwestern roots because he can no longer afford the city. On his final night in the city, friends and ex-lovers gather for a going away party that promises to heighten Jesse's already bittersweet feelings about leaving.

What do you dream of when you're 16-years-old and in a seaside resort in Normandy in the 1980s? A best friend? A lifelong teen pact? Scooting off on adventures on a boat or a motorbike? Living life at breakneck speed? No. You dream of death. Because you can't get a bigger kick than dying. And that's why you save it till the very end. The summer holidays are just beginning, and this story recounts how Alexis grew into himself.

About three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in the historic town of Sintra, Portugal.

Two women, Nic and Jules, brought a son and daughter into the world through artificial insemination. When one of their children reaches age, both kids go behind their mothers' backs to meet with the donor. Life becomes so much more interesting when the father, two mothers and children start to become attached to each other.

Two modern-day cowboys meet on a shepherding job in the summer of '63, the two share a raw and powerful summer together that turns into a lifelong relationship conflicting with the lives they are supposed to live.

A pregnant New York social worker begins to develop romantic feelings for her gay best friend, and decides she'd rather raise her child with him, much to the dismay of her overbearing boyfriend.

Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.

After his gay cousin dies from hepatitis, young Laurent, who lives with his best friend Carole, falls in love with Cedric, a plant scientist. He's afraid to inform his conservative parents that he is gay.

Havana, Cuba, 1979. Flamboyantly gay artist Diego (Jorge Perugorría) attempts to seduce the straight and strait-laced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to become friends with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two. But can it last? Strawberry and Chocolate became an instant hit when it was released, and has become a classic of Cuban cinema due to its charming and authentic exploration of a connection between two people under historical circumstances that seem levelled against them.

The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.

Both original and incredibly romantic, Redwoods tells the story of an already-partnered man whose love is tested when a mysterious drifter passes through his small Northern California town.

An American film-star and an unknown British actress meet on set in Rome. She is angry when he refuses to speak to her journalist father, but later they have a passionate relationship.

Anna is an accountant for an important insurance firm and lives with her longterm lover Alessio - a man who longs for a stable longterm relationship with children, home, etc. Anna, feeling as though the fire has fizzled in that relationship takes up with co-worker Domenico and the two begin a passionate affair.

A comedy that follows the break-up of a French rock group.

When Sebastian meets Andreas for the first time, he knows they belong together. While Sebastian defies gender norms — flouting convention in his androgynous fluidity — straight-identifying Andreas becomes unable to accept his attraction to another man, as their relationship progresses. Struggling with his identity, Sebastian becomes increasingly determined to become “Ellie,” even if it means walking away from Andreas. Something Must Break brims with raw electricity as it explores questions of gender and sexuality with refreshing candor.

Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.