As readers of my blogs and my novels well know, I’m an ardent romantic.  Two types of romance exist:

• Happy-ever-after romance, in which the lovers stroll off into the sunset at the end hand in hand.
• Tragic romance, in which the lovers’ destinies are doomed not to be intertwined permanently.

Earlier this week, I finished reading a Nicholas Sparks novel which I intended to review on this website. But because the ending planted the book firmly in the ‘tragic romance’ category – the lead male, whom the female realises she should have chosen to be with twenty years ago, dies before they can make a future together – I find myself unable to review the book, because it left me feeling sad and dissatisfied, not dreamy and romantic as I like novels to do.

Yes, I am a firm fan of the happy-ever-after romance. Not that I take ‘happy-ever-after’ to mean literally that; of course lovers will encounter hard times as a normal part of life. But for me, reading a romance novel and watching a romance movie are forms of inspiration and escape, and I prefer not to be buried in a pile of tissues after the event.

Over time, I’ve watched many romance movies that have rendered me decidedly morose and wobbly. Here is my top five list of wonderfully romantic movies that I so want to love, but utterly fail to do so:

1. Titanic: All that emotion throughout the film, and at the end Jack doesn’t survive. Then, when Rose dies herself and returns in ghostly form to Jack, we’re left thinking, ‘What about the husband she married post-Jack and dedicated her life too?’
2. City of Angels: A most wrenching ending. All the journey the angel goes on through the film and his choice to fall to earth for Meg Ryan, and their happiness lasts but a night.
3. 3.       Waterloo Bridge: Beautifully acted by Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh and so very poignant, but the heroine’s tragic suicide at the end made me very reluctant to watch it again.
4. West Side Story: The modern-day interpretation of Romeo and Juliet; after all those ‘tomorrows’, tomorrow will never come for the lovers.
5. Moulin Rouge: Poor Satine gets little chance to be in love before consumption claims her. It’s wonderful that her death inspires her lover to write, but wouldn’t we all much rather they be together at the end?

I think, for me, it is the death right at the end without the lovers having much of a chance to make it together that puts me off. The movie Ghost, for example, doesn’t distress me as much because the characters were already together and they had a whole movie to let go of each other. And the film most heralded as the pinnacle of romance, The Notebook, of course ends in death, but it is the death any romantic would wish for – together in each other’s arms, having lived a lifetime together.

What do you think? Do you love a tear-jerker, or do you prefer to leave a cinema with a happy glow? I would love to hear your thoughts.