Best movies like The Cruel Embrace

An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.

Dominic works round the clock: nights making biscotti for his family's bakery in a working-class Italian neighborhood in Pittsburgh, then days downtown where he's a specialist in firing people at a company that negotiates mergers. He's thrown for a loop with he learns that Bella, an elderly neighbor who's his family's closest friend, has but a few months to live. All her life, she's saved money in coffee cans for her daughter, Lucca's, wedding, but Lucca is off in foreign lands, initially as a Peace Corps volunteer, and doesn't need a man. Dominic vows to bring Lucca home and convince her to marry him to fulfill Bella's most fervent wish. What will Lucca say?

A mother searches for five years to find her kidnapped son in this fact-based drama. Unexpectedly the boy is found, but the reunion is not as she hoped. She now has to deal with five years of abuse that the boy suffered at the hands of his kidnappers.

Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.

No one listens when a teenager suspects that her cousin is in an abusive relationship.

Lena is a lonely, plump adolescent girl. Much to her surprise she gets a relationship with the popular but unreliable Daan. Lena moves in with Daan and his strange father Tom and is willing to do a lot for his love. More than a lot.

As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.

When Ruth Matthews's husband is killed in a fall at an archaeological dig, her daughter Sally handles her father's death in a very odd manner. As Sally's condition worsens, Ruth takes her to see Jake, an expert in childhood autism. Jake attempts to bring Sally out of her mental disarray through traditional therapy methods, but Ruth takes a different route. She risks her own sanity by attempting to enter her daughter's mind and make sense of the seemingly bizarre things that Sally does, including building a wondrous house of cards

When an aging matriarch starts showing signs of dementia, her dysfunctional family in Istanbul must navigate a minefield of unresolved issues to care for her.

A 12-year-old girl faces a father she hardly remembers after his transition into a woman.

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.

A woman finds out she's pregnant and returns home when the expected father wants nothing to do with her.

A father and daughter are reunited some 11 years after the father's drug addiction tore the family apart.

Like many Native families, Lena Mahikan grew up in the cycle of abuse. Her father, a residential school survivor, was an alcoholic until he killed himself when Lena was 10. Her mother, only 14 years her senior, turned to the slots. By the time Lena was 15, she was pregnant and, before giving birth, was kicked to the curb by her mom. The cycle continues and Lena is now watching helplessly as her own daughter, Peeka, spirals out of control, landing herself in the hospital following a drug overdose. As a final attempt at survival, Lena decides to return home and face her own mother and a past she’s desperate to escape.

A man attempts to reclaim the life that prison took from him but his dark past threatens to ruin everything.

Laura, in her thirties, lives alone on the outskirts of a big city. She learns that her father is in a coma, following a serious traffic accident. She decides to visit him regularly at the hospital: the opportunity finally presents itself to settle accounts, perhaps even to take revenge... But life is unpredictable and Laura's desire for revenge will lead to a reunion troubling with her family and her past. She will come out of it reconciled, with herself and with life.

The difficult relationship between a british postal officer and his adoptive son.

In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life.

A woman's schizophrenia affects her relationships with her husband and son.

After a tragic accident caused by the truck of the middle-aged Carl Lee where a woman dies with a crushed stern, he is arrested and sent to the county jail. His son PJ, who works washing dishes and cleaning tables in a restaurant, feels lost, without financial support to keep his father's house, and is fired from his job and evicted from his house.

Family members struggle to heal their emotional wounds after an incident of sexual abuse.

Lyon, France in 1970s, Sibylle, Corinne, and Georgette are sisters who share everything, as they live with their Italian mother. Sibylle is the only blonde in the family, except for their father who abandoned them, and she feels isolated. She dreams of meeting her French father one day.

Abandoned by her dreamer single mom, a teenage loner becomes obsessed with ecological disaster, forcing her and her grandmother, a functioning alcoholic, to rethink their futures.

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.

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

Julien and his mum care for each other very much. But Julien has committed a deadly sin: he is growing into a teenager! Worse, he has found himself a girlfriend of his age. "Mummy" is not going to tolerate such an ignominy. Julien is HER baby and will remain HERS for ever, encouraged in her "crusade" by her bovine husband and barely thwarted by the more courageous interventions of Suzanne, Julien's sympathetic big sister.

An adopted boy who, as a taciturn adult, visits his birth mother and strikes up a relationship fraught with tension and emotion.

Michael, a young autistic boy who has trouble with verbalization but a real talent for technology, uses a computer to plead for help after being molested at his school.

Corinne is a single mother of twin 5-year-old boys, Steven and Phillip, who are diagnosed with autism. Public school officials threaten to remove them from school due to their behavior, but through therapy, the boys are able to make major strides in their capabilities. A decade later, teens Steven and Phillip seek to prove they can handle high school while still struggling with their disorder.

After a woman's husband beats and abuses her, she and her son join the witness protection program and move away secretly.

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.

A woman with a hearing problem tries to get het life back together after a car accident that killed her husband.

Shy, gentle half-wit Dennis, whose only obsession is train-spotting, is released early on account of good behavior after a rape sentence. His parents who run a modest barbershop, skeptic André and Rita, desperately try to keep him out of girl trouble, but his victim's sister Barbara starts a hate campaign. After another girl reports abuse, Dennis is jailed and beaten black and blue daily. Barbara's boyfriend, lawyer Thomas Verelst, accepts to help 'pro deo' (no cost) and pleads that Dennis belongs in a mental institution.

Life on the Rock never seemed easy, but for Mitsy it is especially rough. The teenager has been abandoned by her mother, a particularly unfit parent prone to both the bottle and the sex trade. She is left to be brought up by her mercurial grandmother Bride, who is well-meaning but oppressively suffocating. Mitsy's dreams for the future hinge on her desire to be a hairdresser, but her current emotional well-being revolves around a wee dog named Sparky, an unwanted canine misfit to whom she becomes hopelessly attached. After Bride agrees to let Mitsy take the dog in as a pet, the teen tries desperately to create a happy, safe place for Sparky to thrive.

Serginho has a hard time finding his place in the world as he works with his uncle at the market, supports his depressed mother, and takes care of his little brother.