Best movies like The Scarlet Letter

When intimacy is forbidden and passion is a sin, love is the most defiant crime of all.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Scarlet Letter Starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldman, Robert Duvall, Robert Prosky, and more. If you liked The Scarlet Letter then you may also like: Young Adam, Zandalee, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Until September, Valmont 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.

Set in puritanical Boston in the mid 1600s, the story of seamstress Hester Prynne, who is outcast after she becomes pregnant by a respected reverend. She refuses to divulge the name of the father, is "convicted" of adultery and forced to wear a scarlet "A" until an Indian attack unites the Puritans and leads to a reevaluation of their laws and morals.

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Young Adam

A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.

Zandalee

Bored with her marriage to burnt out poet turned corporate executive Thierry, Zandalee falls prey to an old friend of her husband, the manipulative and egotistical Johhny and becomes enmeshed in a sensual, passionate and destructive affair.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.

Until September

American tour guide Mo Alexander misses her tour group, and then her flight out of Paris. Stuck in the city of romance, Mo runs into the very suave -- and very married -- Xavier, who attempts to seduce Mo while his family is out of town. His charms prove hard to resist, and Mo succumbs, though her conscience weighs heavy. Soon their bickering romance of convenience takes a serious turn, and, in spite of himself, Xavier finds he's falling in love.

6.7 / 10 1989 Drama Romance
suggested by: user996q0tybnga

Valmont

Set in Baroque France, a scheming widow and her lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman. The lover, Valmont, bets that he can seduce her, even though she is an honorable woman. If he wins, he can have his lover to do as he will. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love.

Virtual Desire

Brad's wife Susan is mysteriously murdered. Brad begins recounting all the affairs he had with women he met on an internet fantasy line. One of those women was the murderer. Who, and why?

5.2 / 10 1989 Romance Drama
suggested by: user640jxpryqaa

Wild Orchid

A woman lawyer becomes mesmerized by a self-made millionaire during an encounter in Rio setting off a series of erotic encounters.

Wuthering Heights

Young orphan Heathcliff is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Cathy. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Cathy, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Edgar Linton, a man of means who befits her stature. Heathcliff vows to win her back.

Original Sin

A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp

Angels and Insects

In Victorian England, wealthy patriarch Sir Harald Alabaster invites an impoverished biologist, William Adamson, into his home. There, William tries to continue his work, but is distracted by Alabaster's seductive daughter, Eugenia. William and Eugenia begin a torrid romance, but as the couple become closer, the young scientist begins to realize that dark, disturbing things are happening behind the closed doors of the Alabaster manor.

Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina, the wife of a Russian imperial minister, creates a high-society scandal by an affair with Count Vronsky, a dashing cavalry officer in 19th-century St. Petersburg.

Anna Karenina

In Imperial Russia, Anna, the wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets the charming cavalry officer Vronsky to whom she is immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

Asylum

A woman becomes very curious about one of her psychiatrist husband's inmates, a man who was found guilty in the murder and disfigurement of his former wife.

Closer

Two couples disintegrate when they begin destructive adulterous affairs with each other.

The Lickerish Quartet

A jaded, wealthy couple watch a blue movie in their castle home along with her adult son. The son is testy, so they go into town and watch a circus-like thrill ride. The daredevil woman in the show looks exactly like one of the women in the movie, so the man invites her to join them for a nightcap. Tensions among the family seem to rise. She stays overnight, and during her 24 hours in the castle, each of its three residents involves her in a fantasy. She, in turn, keeps asking, "Who has the gun?" Will there be violence before it's over?

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Unhappily married aristocrat Lady Chatterley begins a torrid affair — and falls deeply in love — with the gamekeeper on her husband's country estate.

Pieces of a Woman

When a young mother's home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.

Damage

The life of a respected British politician at the height of his career crumbles when he becomes obsessed with his son's lover.

Dangerous Liaisons

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.

Indecent Proposal

John Gage offers a down-on-his-luck yuppie husband $1 million for the opportunity to spend the night with the man's wife.

Henry & June

While traveling in Paris, author Henry Miller and his wife, June, meet Anais Nin, and sexual sparks fly as Nin starts an affair with the openly bisexual June. When June is forced to return to the U.S., she gives Nin her blessing to sleep with her husband. Then, when June returns to France, an unexpected, and sometimes contentious, threesome forms.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

The Painted Veil

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

Two Moon Junction

A young Southern débutante temporarily abandons her posh lifestyle and upcoming, semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged drifter who works at a local carnival.

Dot the I

Young lovers in London are wrapped up in a love triangle that may not be exactly what it seems. Carmen, a beautiful Spanish woman with a tendency to lose her temper at the drop of a hat, is about to be married to Barnaby, a caring, wealthy, but slightly boring Englishman. While out with friends on her 'hen night' she encounters a stranger who suddenly sparks a passion that has been sleeping within her. As her wedding date approaches, she finds herself struggling to put this newcomer out of her mind, but his effect on her keeps growing stronger. What is it that he sees in her, and why does she feel like she's being pushed inevitably into his arms?

The End of the Affair

On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.

Masquerade

A recently orphaned heiress meets a young racing yacht captain on Long Island. He shows interest in her and, being heiress to $200,000,000, love may not be the reason.

Heat and Dust

Anne is investigating the life of her grand-aunt Olivia, whose destiny has always been shrouded with scandal. As Anne delves into the history of her grand-aunt, she is led to reconsider her own life.

Inner Sanctum

A woman attempts suicide when she suspects her husband doesn't love her and is having an affair. Now she's wheelchair-bound, and her husband, who indeed doesn't love her and is having an affair, hires a private nurse to look after his wife. The nurse begins to suspect that she was hired because of unproven allegations that she murdered someone's wife in a similar situation, that the husband wants her to murder his wife.

Love Letters

After discovering a box of old love letters sent to her mother by a mysterious stranger, Anna, a young radio deejay, begins a torrid affair with a married man. Burning attraction brings them together, but the reality does not come close to the passion expressed in the letters.

My Brother's Wife

After almost 10 years of marriage, attractive Zoe discovers that her marriage lacks passion and surprise, and is seduced by the possibility of finding those sensations already forgotten in her husband's brother. From this premise a series of events lead these three characters to a dangerous game of revenges, secrets and passions. Two brothers and one woman: the triangle is outlined in a disquieting way. It is a bomb that triggers family secrets, the contained rage of desire and the unmanageable power of love. An exciting story that subjugates the viewer from beginning to end. Even though Zoe/Sonia has been married to Ignacio/Ishan for about a decade, they are unable to have children. She wants to be intimate but he prefers to be ready for intimacy on Saturdays only, and she gets physically drawn to his artistic brother, Gonzalo/Rohan. Then things get complicated for her after she tests positive for motherhood and finds that her husband may be gay.

The Scarlet Letter

In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne and kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love. After Dimmesdale must go away for a time to England, he returns to discover that Hester has given birth to their child and is the focus of local censure.

The Scarlet Letter

In the seventeenth century, in Massachusetts, a young woman is forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her dress for bearing a child out of wedlock.

28 Hotel Rooms

While traveling for work in a city far from their homes, a novelist and a corporate accountant find themselves in bed together. Although she’s married, and he’s seeing someone, their intense attraction turns a one-night stand into an unexpected relationship and a respite from the obligations of daily life. Through a series of moments – some profound, some silly, some intensely intimate – we see a portrait of an evolving relationship that could become the most significant one of their lives.

5.6 / 10 1993 Drama Romance
suggested by: silentfilm

Ethan Frome

Married couple, Ethan and Zeena, are in need an extra hand around the house due to Zeena's debilitated body and constant illness. The young woman who joins them is a beautiful, spirited person. She and Ethan fall in love much to the dismay of Zeena.

5.8 / 10 2007 Drama Romance
suggested by: user6358fg1byb5

Silk

Based on the best-selling novel by Alessandro Baricco, this visually stunning film tells the story of a French trader who finds unexpected love far away from home.

Body Chemistry

A research project on sexual response leads two doctors into an affair and their deepest passions and darkest fantasies are revealed.

Cold Heart

A married woman has a fling with her husband’s charming, but sociopathic young patient, but when she returns to her husband she finds herself being stalked by her former lover.

Stolen Women, Captured Hearts

Kansas, 1868. A wagon train is attacked by a band of Lakota Sioux led by the young and athletic warrior Tokalah. The attractive, red haired Anna Brewster-Morgan and her friend Sarah White are on this wagon train too. When Tokalah noticed a terrified Anna with a Bible, he thinks this is an omen. Despite killing the other passengers of the wagon train, only Anna and Sarah may continue their voyage. The next day Anna and Sarah are kidnapped by Tokalah. At first terrified of her captors, the unhappily married Anna eventually falls in love with the noble, honorable Tokalah. After a year's captivity, Sarah is returned to her own people. Anna now must choose between her new life with Tokalah and her previous existence as the wife of farmer Daniel Morgan.

The Key to Sex

When brainy office assistant Simon is left in charge of the boss's Hollywood mansion, the weekend becomes an opportunity of a lifetime. Entrusted by power-hungry movie producer Alan to guard the estate, Simon thinks he's finally made the grade until he learns that his friends and co-workers have their own plans for the place...

Criminal Passion

A homicide detective begins a torrid affair with a senator's son who is a suspect in a series of grisly murders.

Heart of Stone

A psychological thriller about a married women who has an affair with a charming young man and gets involved in a series of murders not knowing if the killer is her lover or her husband or someone else.

The Blood Oranges

Cyril and Fiona, a free-wheeling married couple, travel to a tropical coastal town to follow their sexual fantasies. Cyril is a manipulator. There, they meet another couple, Catherine and Hugh, and their three children. Hugh is a one-armed photographer who specializes in nude photographs of peasant women. Soon, they decide to live together and an erotic atmosphere develops between them.

Stealing Heaven

Abelard, a famous teacher of philosophy at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, falls in love with one of his students, Héloïse d'Argenteuil. A sixteen-year old girl raised in a convent, Héloïse has an intellectual curiosity and rebels against the status of women in 12th century Europe. When others begin to suspect their relationship, Heloise's uncle Fulbert and the bishop of Paris work together to put a stop to it. Héloïse becomes pregnant with Abelard's child, and they are married in secret. Abelard struggles for acting against the will of God, yet is unable to escape his love for Heloise.

Rock Haven

The coastal California community of Rock Haven is the perfect place for cute eighteen-year-old Brady and his loving mother to begin a fresh start. Their mission: to spread the word of the Lord. But while roaming the beach one day, Brady meets Clifford, a young man who is the complete opposite of him: outgoing and athletic as well as incredibly handsome. Their initial encounter stirs up feelings of homo desire that Brady has been suppressing. Once Clifford makes it clear that their attraction is mutual, Brady's conflicting feelings of religious obligation and natural impulse go into overdrive, and the two young men must navigate their confusion, lust and beliefs in order to come to a mutual understanding.

Women in Love

Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920's English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.

Lake Consequence

A repressed housewife is plunged into erotic ecstasy by the arrival of a handsome groundskeeper. At a remote lake, she is encouraged by the groundskeeper and his lover to explore her deepest sexual desires.

Madame Bovary

A young woman in her late teens, a reader of novels and with high hopes of romance and passion, marries a widowed country doctor. Although he dotes on her, she is soon bored and discontent. First, she gives her imagination to a law student in town, and next she takes a lover. When he refuses to run away with her, she takes up again with the law clerk. Her spending on dresses and furnishings mounts; these debts and her ill-advised professional counsel to her husband bring his ruin.

Gospel of Deceit

Emily, a preacher's wife, is as faithful a spouse as they come — until her hubby, Ted, takes in a handsome drifter who's down on his luck. (Red flag!) Emily finds herself drawn to this sexy wanderer, and it doesn't take long for the pair to begin a steamy affair — right under unsuspecting Ted's nose. When a guilt-ridden Emily eventually tries to call it quits, the real drama begins!

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