‘Crymore vs Crymore’: Why divorce movies are so enduring

As Julia Roberts and George Clooney team up again for the romcom ‘Ticket to Paradise’, playing a divorced couple, Geoffrey Macnab explores how films deal with love on the rocks

Broken homes: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Justin Henry in ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ (Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Screenwriters spend an inordinate amount of time devising new ways to create couples. Romantic dramas and comedies find love springing up in the most unlikely places and between the most unlikely people. Opposites often attract. Memorable affairs transcend class, race, age, gender, and sometimes even planetary boundaries. When characters on screen fall for one another, nothing can keep them apart. They defy everything, from tutting relatives to death itself, to maintain their relationships.

The dark side of screen romance, though, is the divorce movie. It’s a little remarked fact that filmmakers spend almost as much time splitting up couples as they do in bringing them together. Look through recent film history and you will find a surprising number of films about separation, emotional uncoupling, and divorce.

Ageing heartthrobs Julia Roberts and George Clooney will shortly be on screen together again in Ol Parker’s romcom Ticket To Paradise. The film features an older, wiser pair of jaded divorcees who rush to Bali to try to stop their lovestruck daughter from getting married – and repeating their terrible mistake from 25 years before.