Best movies like Le Rouge et le Noir

Beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating, Becky is the orphaned daughter of a starving English artist and a French chorus girl. She yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright promises and resolves to conquer English society by any means possible. A mere ascension into the heights of society is simply not enough. So Becky finds a patron in the powerful Marquess of Steyne whose whims enable Becky to realise her dreams. But is the ultimate cost too high for her?

A nobleman with a literary flair, the Marquis de Sade lives in a madhouse where a beautiful laundry maid smuggles his erotic stories to a printer, defying orders from the asylum's resident priest. The titillating passages whip all of France into a sexual frenzy, until a fiercely conservative doctor tries to put an end to the fun.

A jealous man frames his wife's suspected lover for murder.

Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois. The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, legendary director Jean Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie.

When Colonel Chabert returns from the war, he discovers that he has lost everything.

France, 1640. Cyrano, the charismatic swordsman-poet with the absurd nose, hopelessly loves the beauteous Roxane; she, in turn, confesses to Cyrano her love for the handsome but tongue-tied Christian. The chivalrous Cyrano sets up with Christian an innocent deception, with tragic results.

In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.

At the height of his fame, Oscar Wilde angers the Marquis of Queensberry by having what is believed to be a romantic relationship with Queensberry's son Lord Alfred Douglas, who is twenty years Wilde's junior. When Queensberry slanders Wilde, the artist decides to take the matter to court and brings about his own downfall.

A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.

Works of art are disappearing, stolen by a master thief, a master of disguise. Father Brown has two goals: to catch the thief and to save his soul.

In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity.

High-profile lawyer Michel takes on the defence of a young and pretty small-time thief, Cécile, after the botched hold-up of a jewellery shop. As predicted by his elegant art-dealer and sculptress wife Viviane, Michel goes well beyond his brief, jeopardising his career and ruining his marriage of 18 years.

Also known as 'The Confessional', another of Pete Walkers's critiques of institutional hypocrisy, in which a troubled young girl goes to confession at the local church. Unfortunately, the sexually frustrated priest she confesses to becomes obsessed with her. At first, the priest stalks the girl, but later it is revealed that he will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her.

Romero is a compelling and deeply moving look at the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who made the ultimate sacrifice in a passionate stand against social injustice and oppression in his county. This film chronicles the transformation of Romero from an apolitical, complacent priest to a committed leader of the Salvadoran people.

Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Cathedral Notre Dame. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an alchemist, gazes at her lustfully. Later in the night, Frollo orders Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer and his faithful servant, to kidnap Esmeralda. But when the ugly freak comes close to her is touched by the young woman's beauty...

The widow Barny lives in Nazi-occupied France, looking after her half-Jewish daughter in a small village. When the Germans arrive, she decides to baptize her and chooses priest Léon Morin to do so. After spending some time with him, the relationship with her confessor turns into a confrontation with both God and her own repressed desire. 

Nicolas Philibert goes to America after killing a French aristocrat. On his return he tries to divorce his wife, Charlotte, but when he sees others trying to woo her his own interest is rekindled.

A young seminarian rattles the established order at a Catholic parish run by an older pastor.

A French air ace discovers that his showgirl wife's first husband is still alive.

In 1867, with Garibaldi's forces close to bringing Rome into the Italian kingdom, Monsignor Colombo da Priverno, a world-weary judge on the papal court, wants to resign, disgusted by the violence to which the papacy resorts to hold secular power.

Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.

Nicolas Mallet, an inconspicuous and shy bank employee, one day successfully invites Marie-Paul, a young woman he hadn’t known before, in the streets of Paris to a café and sleeps with her the next day. When he tells his surprised friend Claude about the incident, the disillusioned and handicapped writer starts to guide him, leading Nicolas on a dazzling social ascent.

A teacher runs an ad in the newspaper to find a wife. Afraid of beautiful ladies, he weds an ugly woman. After a car accident, he meets a doctor who offers to reveal his wife's beauty.

Secret internal documents reveal how Catholic Church officials protect priests accused of pedophilia and sexual abuse by moving them from country to country, sometimes as far away as Africa. Even Pope Francis is implicated. When he was bishop of Buenos Aires, he tried to influence the Argentinean justice system in order to protect a convicted priest. From Cameroon to Argentina, America to France and Italy, this investigation traces the transfers of pedophile priests.

Country singer Leana Taylor (Dolly Parton) struggles to escape from her controlling manager/boyfriend Hank (John Terry) as well as her troubled past. After turning to her guitarist (Billy Dean), Leanna finally faces her past, including her estranged mother and the death of her father. Through flashbacks, Leana deals with her past as she attempts to move her life forward and begin a recording career.

The film centers on a pair of young lovers; Bapiste is more than ready to have sex with his girlfriend Josette, but she refuses, arguing that when they are married they can have all the sex they would like. Meanwhile, powerful Hutu leaders have had enough of Tutsi rebels and call on all Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbors. As chaos breaks out, the Tutsis flee and the lovers are separated. Josette and her family find solace in a Catholic church run by a sadistic priest. The Catholic Church, the state, and the French army look the other way as bloodshed ensues. Josette is taken as a "wife" by the priest and repeatedly raped. When the Belgian army sent in to protect the church is called away on an emergency, the Hutus attack and massacre hundreds of women and children. Josette miraculously survives, but she is only a husk of the woman that she was. As the Tutsis regroup, they exact terrible revenge.

A small town politician, kept from marrying the love of his life, eventually marries another woman and his career ascends, but he secretly continues the relationship with his true love.

A clergyman travels to Spain to join the Loyalist side during the Spanish Civil War and finds himself attracted to a beautiful entertainer.

In 1827, Berthet, the son of a craftsman and a young seminarian, was tried and sentenced to death for murdering his former mistress, the wife of a notable who had hired him as tutor to his children.

A country priest receives his bishop with the mission of converting a nudist colony.

A pious 20-year-old juvenile delinquent is sent to work at a sawmill in a small town; on arrival, he dresses up as a priest and accidentally takes over the local parish. The arrival of this young, charismatic preacher is an opportunity for the local community to begin the healing process after a tragedy that happened a year prior.

In the First World War, when Paris is expected to fall to the Germans, the attractive widow, Princesse de Bormes, organises a convoy of cars to evacuate the wounded from the front, and bring them back to her villa in Paris to recuperate. The authorities will not give them passes until an innocent 16-year-old boy, Guillaume Thomas de Fontenoy, joins them and is mistaken as the nephew of the popular General de Fontenoy. The Princess is enraptured by Thomas and her daughter, Henriette, falls in love with him. However Thomas feels impelled to see more of the action of the war.

The Marquis de Montauran was appointed to command the Chouans whose first two revolts were crushed. An aristocrat, Marie-Nathalie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché to seduce and capture him.

Arianne, a young Russian maid living in France, meets a man twice her age she falls in love with.