This Valentine’s Day is going to be an unusual one for many couples, separated by the pandemic and unable to go out and celebrate. These five favourite movies of ours all feature lovers separated by space and time. 1. Ghost (1990) In one of the most enduringly popular films of the 1990s, not even death can keep Sam (Patrick Swayze) and his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore) apart. After he is killed in a mugging gone wrong, Sam reaches out from beyond the grave to avenge his own death and protect the woman he loves. To do so, he calls upon the help of Oda Mae Brown (an Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg), a phoney psychic whose efforts to contact the dead had been a scam until Sam invades her head space, and at one point, her body too. What unfolds is cinematic lightning-in-a-bottle, as director Jerry Zucker and writer Bruce Joel Rubin (whose screenplay also won an Oscar) somehow manage to steer their fantasy-romance-comedy-horror-thriller to major box office success, all while simultaneously introducing the Righteous Brothers to a new generation, inspiring women to adopt Moore’s “boy cut” hairstyle and reinventing the pottery wheel as a powerful tool of seduction. 2. Sleepless in Seattle (1993) A reporter hears a voice on the radio and becomes obsessed. That could be the premise for a creepy stalker thriller, but is also the idea behind Nora Ephron’s 1993 romantic comedy. Tom Hanks plays the recently widowed Sam, who moves with his eight-year-old son from Chicago to Seattle but struggles to get over the loss of his wife. When his son calls a local radio station and forces his dad onto the air, Sam lets it all pour out, and in doing so, captures the hearts of women across America. Among these is Meg Ryan’s Baltimore journalist, Annie, who despite being engaged to Bill Pullman’s uptight Walter, writes to Sam. The best of Hanks and Ryan’s four on-screen collaborations, and the film that cemented their reputation as one of Hollywood’s golden screen couples, Sleepless in Seattle found a perfect balance between implausible contrivance and romantic fantasy, even going so far as to acknowledge its detachment from reality by openly lifting its climax from ’50s classic An Affair to Remember . 3. Il Mare (2000) Widely dismissed on its initial release, Lee Hyun-seung’s romantic fantasy has only gained in stature as the years go by, and 20 years later is regarded as one of the greatest Korean romances of all time. Jun Ji-hyun and Lee Jung-jae play the residents of the same, secluded beachfront house, who strike up a correspondence via letters left in the letterbox outside, despite existing two years apart. By inhabiting the same space, albeit at different times, these two lonely souls become inextricably linked, defying the fabric of the space-time continuum that conspires to keep them apart. It’s a bewitching concept that plays on our sense of memory, love of history, and our constant yearning to be remembered after we are gone. The film was remade by Hollywood rather less successfully , as 2006’s The Lake House , starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, a film which, somewhat ironically, has largely faded from memory, while the legacy of Il Mare only continues to grow. 4. Atonement (2007) Two lovers, torn apart by a childish misunderstanding and kept from one another as war ravages Europe, fuel the fires of romantic tragedy in Joe Wright’s visually sumptuous drama. Adapted from the celebrated novel by Ian McEwan, Atonement stars James McAvoy and Keira Knightley as Robbie and Cecilia, whose happiness is thwarted by the naive accusations of Cecilia’s younger sister (Saoirse Ronan). Robbie is sent to prison, only to be released on condition that he enlists in the army, and is whisked off to the front lines. What follows is the compounding sense of guilt that festers within a young woman, as she comes to understand the devastating impact of her childish actions, albeit years too late. Featuring an Oscar-winning score by Dario Marianelli, and sumptuous cinematography that includes an audacious single-shot re-enactment of the evacuation of Dunkirk, Atonement is, as its title suggests, a rumination on relationships missed, choices made, and the mistakes that haunt us forever. 5. Your Name (2016) Japanese animator Makoto Shinkai has frequently explored the impact of space and time on romantic relationships, themes that ascend to a glorious crescendo in this 2016 box office hit . Teenager Mitsuha escapes the drudgery of her rural life dreaming that she is Taki, an adolescent boy from Tokyo, only to discover that they have indeed been swapping bodies and living in each other’s shoes. They communicate by leaving each other messages on their phones, and learn that Taki exists three years in the future. While doing their best not to ruin each other’s lives, a fondness grows between them, so when the body-swapping ends abruptly and Mitsuha falls silent, Taki goes in search of the girl he has never met. By turns funny, charming and achingly romantic, Your Name is propelled by dazzling photorealistic animation and the infectious croonings of boy band Radwimps, building to a revelation of profoundly cosmological proportions that anchors Shinkai’s film within Japan’s storied history of cataclysmic tragedy, yet offers a tantalising glimpse of hope for the future. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook