Best movies like Clara's Heart

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Clara's Heart Starring Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Ontkean, Kathleen Quinlan, Neil Patrick Harris, and more. If you liked Clara's Heart then you may also like: 3 Men and a Little Lady, Unexpected, The Way Way Back, Winter Stories, One Christmas and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

David is a teenager whose parents are in a deteriorating marriage after their infant daughter dies. Clara is a chambermaid at a Jamaican resort who's hired to be a housekeeper. She and David develop a close bond, opening his eyes and heart to new experiences, and eventually leading to a disturbing secret in Clara's past.

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Know any good movies to watch like Clara's Heart 1988. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

3 Men and a Little Lady

Sylvia's work increasingly takes her away from the three men who help bring up Mary, her daughter. When she decides to move to England and take Mary with her, the three men are heartbroken at losing the two most important females in their lives.

Unexpected

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

The Way Way Back

Shy 14-year-old Duncan goes on summer vacation with his mother, her overbearing boyfriend, and her boyfriend's daughter. Having a rough time fitting in, Duncan finds an unexpected friend in Owen, manager of the Water Wizz water park.

Winter Stories

An adult Martin Roy reminisces about his life in the 1966/67 school year. At fifteen years old and in his last year of junior high school, he breathed, ate and slept hockey. He collected hockey cards, played street hockey with his friends, tried skating and ice hockey for the first time in his life, but was most fascinated with his local national league team, the Montréal Canadiens, and its star player, Henri Richard. He dreamed of growing up and working for the Canadiens franchise. But a more immediate goal was to get tickets to one of their games, using M. Richard and his banker father, Hervé, as possible conduits to that goal.

One Christmas

Based on Truman Capote's bittersweet tale of a young boy's adventures with the father he's never known in New Orleans in the 1930s..

6.2 / 10 1991 Drama
suggested by: user3467232sw7n

Rambling Rose

Rose is taken in by the Hillyer family to serve as a 1930s housemaid so that she can avoid falling into a life of prostitution. Her appearence and personality is such that all men fall for her, and she knows it. She can't help herself from getting into trouble with men.

Bastard Out of Carolina

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

The Bay Boy

A Roman Catholic teenage boy in Glace Bay, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia during the 1930s faces various growing-up problems: Should be become a priest? What should he do about the murder he witnessed, committed by a local cop and upstanding parishioner? And how far should he go with his girl friend, who happens to be the murderer's daughter?

Invisible Child

A nanny is hired by a troubled mother and finds herself fighting to hold together the entire family when she realizes the woman has an imaginary daughter.

Men Don't Leave

After her husband John dies unexpectedly, Beth Macauley is unprepared for life without him. She is unemployed with no job skills and $60,000 in debt from on-going renovations to their house located in suburban Bingham. She doesn't know what to do but sell what material possessions she has, such as the family pick-up truck and the house, and move into an apartment in the city, namely Baltimore. Beth just wants to survive by finding a job she doesn't dislike, and keep her family together while trying to maintain her sanity and sense of self-worth

A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon

A recent high school graduate is faced with two options, either go to a business school where his father wants him to go to, or get a full time job. However he decides to defy his father and go to Hawaii. Trouble is he has no money. Along the way he comes to understand his parents and eventually bonds with his father.

To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday

David loves his wife, Gillian. Unfortunately, she died two years ago. David deals with his grief by continuing his romance with Gillian during walks with her "ghost" on the beach at night. While David lives in the past, other family problems crop up in the present in the real world....

A Doll's House

Nora Helmer lives a quiet life with her husband, Torvald, in a small Norwegian town. While he works diligently at a bank, she looks after their children. But Torvald doesn't know that several years ago, when he was very ill and she was desperate for money, Nora forged a loan document and has been secretly working to pay the money back ever since. The arrival of her friend Kristine prompts Nora to re-evaluate her life and confront Torvald.

The Deep End of the Ocean

A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.

Hope Floats

Birdee Pruitt has been humiliated on live television by her best friend, Connie, who's been sleeping with Birdee's husband, Bill. Birdee tries starting over with her daughter, Bernice, by returning to her small Texas hometown, but she's faced with petty old acquaintances who are thrilled to see Birdee unhappy -- except for her friend Justin. As he helps Birdee get back on her feet, love begins to blossom.

The Secret Life of Bees

Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past.

6.2 / 10 1991 Drama Family
suggested by: GlowingGopher

Paradise

A 10-year-old boy spends a summer in the country with a childless couple and a precocious girl.

Housekeeping

In the Pacific Northwest during the 1950s, two young sisters whose mother has abandoned them wind up living with their Aunt Sylvie, whose views of the world and its conventions don't quite live up to most people's expectations.

The Inkwell

The Inkwell is about a 16-year-old boy coming of age on Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1976.

Independence Day

Mary Ann Taylor loves the comforts of her hometown in Mercury, Texas. She has a steady job as a waitress in her father's diner, yet she can't help but feel unfulfilled by a life of pouring coffee and grilling hamburgers. Mary Ann's real passion is photography, but pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer means leaving Mercury behind.

This Christmas

This year Christmas with the Whitfields promises to be one they will never forget. All the siblings have come home for the first time in years and they've brought plenty of baggage with them. As the Christmas tree is trimmed and the lights are hung, secrets are revealed and family bonds are tested. As their lives converge, they join together and help each other discover the true meaning of family.

7.2 / 10 2008 Drama
suggested by: user2469w2gdsgp

Of Boys and Men

Robert Townsend stars as the patriarch of a family devastated when his wife is killed in a senseless auto accident. Reeling with grief, each family member must find courage and vision to carry on, ultimately eager to do the mother proud.

Shadrach

In 1935, 99-year-old former slave Shadrach asks to be buried on the soil where he was born to slavery, and that land is owned by the large Dabney family, consisting of Vernon, Trixie and their seven children, and to bury a black man on that land is a violation of strict Virginia law.

A Family Thing

Earl Pilcher Jr., runs an equipment rental outfit in Arkansas, lives with his wife and kids and parents, and rarely takes off his gimme cap. His mother dies, leaving a letter explaining he's not her natural son, but the son of a Black woman who died in childbirth; plus, he has a half brother Ray, in Chicago, she wants him to visit. Earl makes the trip, initially receiving a cold welcome from Ray and Ray's son, Virgil. His birth mother's sister, Aunt T., an aged and blind matriarch, takes Earl in tow and insists that the family open up to him.

A Simple Twist of Fate

When Michael McCann is thrown over by the woman he loves, he becomes something of a misanthrope and a miser, spending all of his spare money on collectible gold coins. Living in the same town is an affluent family with two sons: John and Tanny. Tanny's a wild boy, whom John cannot control, and one night he breaks into McCann's house, and steals the gold and disappears, which nearly confirms McCann's distrust of mankind. But then, a mysterious young woman dies in the snow outside McCann's house, and her small daughter makes her way to McCann's house and into McCann's life and heart.

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here portrayed as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.

Swimmers

After an accident in a small Maryland fishing town, 11-year-old Emma begins to question the nature of the adults around her.

6.1 / 10 2012 Drama
suggested by: user8510vly396t

Tiger Eyes

After Davey's father is killed in a hold-up, she and her mother and younger brother visit relatives in New Mexico. Here Davey is befriended by a young man who helps her find the strength to carry on and conquer her fears.

Mommy Is at the Hairdresser's

in the summer of 1966, in Beloeil, Québec, where a young girl named Élise is enjoying summer vacation. Summer 1966. It's time to enjoy the summer holiday, total freedom. Suddenly her mother leaves her family to pursue her journalism career in London. Her urge to leave is triggered when she coincidentally listens in on a conversation between her husband and his male lover. Her brother Coco seeks solace in the garage, building a super racing car. Her youngest brother Benoît throws himself into his own inner world. The father seems absolutely knocked out by the situation. Élise decides to take control of her family, in an eloquent attempt to save them. With the assistance of flourishing nature around her, she stands on the threshold of an incomparable summer.

The Boys Are Back

When the wife of sports-writer Joe Warr dies of cancer, he takes on the responsibility of raising their 6-year-old son, and his teenage son from a previous marriage. As Joe rejects the counsel of his mother-in-law and other parents, he develops his own philosophies on parenting.

The Run of the Country

An Irish lad (Matt Keeslar) who fled from his oppressive, widowed father (Albert Finney) falls for a girl (Victoria Smurfit) from an affluent family.

The Grief of Others

The Ryries have suffered a loss: the death of a baby just fifty-seven hours after his birth. Without words to express their grief, the parents, John and Ricky, try to return to their previous lives. The couple's children, ten-year-old Biscuit and thirteen-year-old Paul, responding to the unnamed tensions around them, begin to act out in exquisitely idiosyncratic ways. But as the family members scatter into private, isolating grief, an unexpected visitor arrives, and they find themselves growing more alert to the hurt, humor, warmth, and burdens of others—to the grief that is part of every human life but that also carries within it the power to draw us together.

Love Comes Softly

Marty is a 19 year old pioneer woman, recently married. She goes west with her husband Clem, hoping to start a new life. But Clem unexpectedly dies, and Marty finds herself alone, two months pregnant. Clark Davis, a widower, offers her a marriage of convenience: she needs food and money, and he needs someone to take care of his daughter Missie. She accepts his proposal as a temporary solution.

Losing Chase

An intimate and turbulent relationship develops between Chase, a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown and Elizabeth, the caretaker employed to look after her.

Sister, Sister

Heated confrontations and revelations result when a divorcee returns with her young son to the home of her two sisters.

Burning Secret

While recuperating in a sanatorium in the mountains, a young boy becomes very close friends with an older baron. But the baron is only using the boy to get to know his mother, the wife of an older diplomat. When the boy realises the baron’s intentions, he becomes jealous, moody and depressed.

A Rumor of Angels

An old woman helps a young boy resolve his feelings over the death of his mother.

5.9 / 10 2003 Family Drama
suggested by: user172d6eoo2oy

Spin

"Spin" tells the story of a boy who loses his parents in a plane crash, is taken in by his uncle (Tucci), who then leaves him for ten years in the care of his Hispanic ranch hand (Blades) and his wife (Delany). Once in high school, Eddie (Merriman) reconnects with a girl from his past (Garces), and their growing interracial relationship teaches the sometimes-sullen Eddie to think of others before himself.

A Cooler Climate

Iris is broke after her divorce and takes a job working as a housekeeper for a wealthy woman named Paula. When Paula and her husband separate, an unlikely friendship blossoms between the women.

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer

Three generations of women in a Mexican American family experience sexual awakenings over the course of a summer.

suggested by: ShadowyScorpion

Carry Me Home

A widow named Harriet and her two children Carrie and Brian are living in rural New York in 1947 and are still recovering from the death of Harriet's husband killed in World War II. Carrie is a tomboy and hangs around with boys and they have their own clubhouse. Carrie and her friends make mischief and taunt their mentally challenged neighbor Charlie by stealing one of his puppies. Harriet meets a man named Bernard and begin a courtship, but Carrie is furious that her mother is dating Bernard and wants it to stop. The jealousy and anger of Carrie raises to a fever pitch when Carrie and her friends destroy their neighbor Mr. Grizzle's garden and pour sugar into his tractor. Grizzle then takes Charlie's other puppies away from him and then Grizzle's barn is destroyed by fire. Carrie learns it's time for her to grow up and make amends with her mother and her neighbors for the grief and pain she caused them.

7.7 / 10 2001 Drama TV Movie
suggested by: user166hbma9aa2

What Girls Learn

Two teenage girls must come to terms with their stepfather when their mother is struck by illness.

Lily in Winter

Lily Covington, a Manhattan housekeeper, embarks on a trip to the rural Alabama town of her youth. To Lily's surprise, her employer's nine-year-old son Michael stows away for the ride. Together, Lily and Michael realize just how alike and how different their worlds really are. Michael explores a way of life he never knew existed, while Lily discovers some tender truths about the family she left behind.

The Bad Mother's Handbook

Karen Cooper wants to domineer her family and believes she's its pillar. In fact she does everything wrong. Thus she messes up all their lives and futures, rather then help her loved-ones.

Amy & Isabelle

In 1971, in the small town of Shirley Falls, in Maine, the odd and lonely secretary Isabelle Goodrow raises her teenager daughter Amy alone. She has only two friends in her job among her gossiper colleagues. When her overprotected daughter is seduced by her mathematic teacher Peter Robertson, the world of Isabelle falls apart. She becomes lost and loses her confidence on Amy, spoiling their relationship. Their bond gets tied again when Isabelle discloses her inner secrets from the past to Amy.

The Stone Boy

12-year-old Arnold Hillerman and his 17-year-old brother Eugene live with their family on a farm in Montana. In an accident, Eugene is killed by Arnold's gun. Isolated from emotions he cannot comprehend, Arnold now has to come to terms with his grieving family - including his father, mother, hostile uncle, and grandfather - while his family has to come to terms with Arnold.

1st Love

Antoine, 13, spends the summer vacation with his parents in a rented cottage on an island in the middle of the Saint-Lawrence River. His neighbour, 17-year-old Anna, is an enigmatic and lively young woman. Antoine begins to experience the first stirrings of love-which soon yield a troubling brew of anxiety, desire and obsession. He eventually comes across a terrible secret that will forever change his life.

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