a weekly series hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves

When I think of forbidden Love, Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe comes to my mind, the story Shakespeare took the inspiration from to write Romeo and Juliet. This ill-fated love is not the kind of love I'm going to talk about today; instead, I'm going with love forbidden by the law. 

A beautiful and heartbreaking Film, it follows the emotional and sexual relationship that develops between two cowboys, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), in American West from 1963 to 1983. Thankfully, same-sex relationships are better accepted in today's society, but it wasn't always like that. And Ang Lee's film really does a terrific job at portraying all the shades of the Forbidden Love it tells about. 

As beautiful and heartbreaking as my previous pick, it tells the story of Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving (Ruth Negga), an interracial couple from Virginia who make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend their right to be married. It is a powerful film that showcases how love doesn't have a colour, and it's heartbreaking to think that people still oppose interracial relationships nowadays. 

A more restrained but still beautiful film, this James Ivory film follows Maurice (James Wilby), a young man in Edwardian society who struggles to come to terms and accept his sexuality when his lover, Clive (Hugh Grant), rejects him and marries a woman. While my emotional response wasn't as devastating as it was with my previous picks, it truly hurt seeing Clive treating Maurice like that. And it hurt even more seeing anther young man being incarcerated and losing all of his prestige simply because of his attraction to men.