Best dysfunctional couples on-screen

Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015)

Any relationship in which one has to sign a contract acquiescing to engage in a laundry list of sex acts, after being followed and given disproportionately expensive gifts (ie bribes) by the contract-giver, should by definition be considered dysfunctional. If said relationship is based on Twilight, in which a creepy, possessive vampire stalks a quiet girl until she falls in love with him, it’s even more dysfunctional. Please, for the love of feminism, find a better illicit fantasy.

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Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015)

This Sharat Katariya-directed indie presents a couple that, for most of the film’s duration, should not be together. Ayushmann Khurana’s Prem and Bhumi Pednekar’s Sandhya are talked into an arranged marriage which neither particularly want. Sandhya tries to make the best of it, but her husband is embarrassed by her weight, and is reluctant to sleep with her. Finally, upon hearing him drunkenly insult her in front of friends, she leaves him and they separate – until the court orders them to try and make it work. Eventually, its victory in a wife-carrying competition (really) that allows Prem to feel comfortable in his masculinity and, thus, with Sandhya. But if you ask us: she was better off without him.

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Annie Hall (1977)

Woody Allen’s seminal Annie Hall is the urtext of dysfunctional relationships, though Annie (Diane Keaton) and Alvy’s (Woody Allen) “dysfunction” will be familiar to anyone who’s ever coupled up. She complains to their therapist that they have sex too often (at least three times a week); he complains that they don’t have sex enough (only three times a week!). He comes from a family of poor, irascible Brooklyn Jews; she’s been coddled by restrained New England WASPs. Eventually, they break up, Annie moving to sunny LA (Alvy can’t deal with the lack of neuroses there). Looking back, Alvy realises she might have been perfect for him, but it’s too late: he can never belong to any club that’d have him as a member.

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Certified Copy (2015)

Forget about dysfunctional: this French-Italian-English film from Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami will make you question whether any part of your relationship is real at all, or just a sum of parts you’re playing. Opera singer William Shimell’s character, James, is giving a talk about a book he wrote (about authenticity and copies in art), which Juliette Binoche’s unnamed character attends. They end up spending the day together, and their conversation grows more intimate, until you wonder whether they’ve been together all along, and were only pretending to be strangers – or whether they’re strangers who decide to play husband and wife. Either way, their conflicts concerning matters of family, work, and love cut to the bone. 

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Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Mike Nichols directed this film about a long-term relationship that hasn’t just gone sour, but curdled into something poisonous. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor star as George, a college professor, and Martha, daughter of the college’s president. One night, after a party, they invite a younger couple over to join them for drinks. Their witty banter begins to break down into vicious, cutting insults, as the couple dredges up past embarrassments and long-simmering dissatisfactions. Their bitter, drunken needling begins to infect the young couple as well, and eventually, a shocking secret that forms the core of George and Martha’s animus is revealed.

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