Ooh women love a good cry don’t we? We love nothing more than settling in with a big old tub of ice cream and a giant glass of rose and watching a weepy film to get us through all the emotions our teeny tiny brains experience. #periods #women #whatarewelike.
Seriously though, while the stereotype of women loving a 'weepy' film is hella frustrating, there is no denying we've all fallen afoul of the odd viewing of The Notebook. According to the scientific reasoning of me (aka not scientific at all), the reason we're into watching them is all about the transferring of emotions – like if you’re dealing with some actual crap in your life, having a good old cry over a film is a quick and easy way to alleviate some of your blue feelings without having a total breakdown.
Turns out though, there’s another benefit to watching sad films; if you do it with a friend, it can actually help you bond. According to a study from Cardiff University, 'A negative emotional experience such as watching a ‘weepy’ is more positive when it is shared with a friend.' That's good enough for us. Give your mate a call, get her over and watch one of the below films for some proper bonding.
Celeste & Jesse Forever
This one is bittersweet because as well as being one of the most tearjerky films ever, it's also the film that transformed Andy Samberg from being that funny chap in Lonely Island to bonafide stone cold fox in my mind. I would bury my fingers so deep in that fro you guys. So deep. Anyways, this story of a break-up in denial hurts so bad because it’s toe-curlingly relatable. You’re guaranteed to have been either Celeste or Jesse or both at some point or other in your life and if you ever wanted an excuse to relive your past breakups in full technicolour, this is it. I called my boyfriend after I watched it and begged him through tears never to leave me. He thought someone had died and didn’t really get it. So that was cool.
The Fault In Our Stars
When I first wrote the title to this film I accidentally wrote ‘The Fault In Our Sharts’ which is an entirely different film that would make you cry for a whole other reason. The Fault In Our STARS though is equally brutal. It’s like scientists got together and went ‘What’s the perfect cinematic formula for reducing an audience of mostly stable adult human beings to a sobbing, writhing wreck?’ and then totally nailed it. Cancer, teenage love, parental love, blindness…. FFS man, I lasted until the first hospital scene (aproximately 20 minutes in) before the first cry. Which turned out to be the only cry because it went on for two hours.
Dreams Of A Life
A documentary that recounts the story of a young woman that died alone in her flat in North London in 2003. Her body was only discovered in 2006. No-one realised she was gone. How’s that for a horror story to keep you up at night?
Life Is Beautiful
Only for the truly stable of you out there.* Life Is Beautiful* is the Italian film about a Jewish man who, after getting put in a concentration camp with his very young son, sets about turning the whole thing into a 'game' to shield his son from the horrors of the Holocaust. Every ‘task’ his son completes gets him more points, more points means he'll win a tank. Films about the Holocaust are obviously always truly totally devastating but just you wait for the last scene in this one kids, just you wait.
Dear Zachary
A friend of mine put this on a USB stick for me a few years back and told me to sit down at my earliest convenience and watch it. I forgot about it and only found it during an already-fragile sick day a few months later. WRONG DAY TO WATCH THIS. It's a film that a guy made about his murdered best friend for the baby son that’ll will never get to meet him. Sadly for you (and obviously everyone involved in the film) that's literally only the tip of the iceberg.
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Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.