So Valentine’s Day has been and gone and taken with it the plethora of crappy padded cards and the heart-shaped tack lining the shelves last week. If you’re looking for real romance, rent one these four classic films - all romantic in the true sense of the word.

 Amelie (2001)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Stars: Audrey Tatou

“Elle va changer votre vie…”

An original and unique film set in the most romantic city in the world, Paris. Following the death of her mother, Amelie (Audrey Tatou) lived an isolated childhood with only an overprotective father and an overreactive imagination as company. At the age of 22, Amelie’s life is uncomplicated. She takes pleasure in only the simple things in life: skimming stones on the Seine, cracking the surface of a crème brulee. Then on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, Amelie discovers a tiny box under the bathroom floorboards of her small Parisian apartment. She resolves to trace the owner of the trinkets inside. If she finds him and he is happy, she will devote her life to performing small acts of kindness for strangers. Amelie, once afraid of relationships, then imagines her own with a mysterious, handsome stranger who collects discarded photographs from underneath photo booths. She has fallen in love with this stranger already; but can she ever bring herself to meet him?

A beautifully shot, surreal and contemporary fairy tale.

Casablanca (1942)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman

 “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”

With almost every second line and the majority of the score ingrained into our cultural consciousness, Casblanca is one of the most popular and most romantic films of all time. Humphrey Bogart stepped away from the gangster typecast he was beginning to wear to play romantic hero Rick Blaine, a brooding type who wears his previously broken heart on his sleeve. He runs a moody, smoke-filled piano bar, a stop-off point for fugitives in post-war North Africa. Into his life strolls Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo and his wife Ilsa, a former lover of Rick’s following a fleeting affair in Paris (where else?) And so begins a classic story of the ultimate love-triangle.

You may notice Bergman being shot from only the left (deemed to be her best side) and always with a softening gauze filter. The effect was to make her face “ineffably sad and tender and nostalgic”.

Casablanca has a bit of everything: suspense, romance, drama, an exotic setting and that unforgettable score encapsulated in the song ‘As Time Goes By’. Casablanca; ‘easy to enter, but much harder to leave’, as they say.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Director: Sofia Coppola

Stars: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johannson

“Everyone wants to be found…”

Filmed in only 27 days, Lost on Translation is a sweeping romance story set in the chaotic bustle of Tokyo.

Murray plays Bob, a has-been movie star staying at a huge metropolis of a hotel, whilst filming a lucrative whisky commercial. While drowning his sorrows in the hotel bar, mulling over his doomed marriage he encounters a lost soul. New bride Charlotte has followed husband John on a photography assignment but finds herself alone and unsettled in a sprawling foreign hotel. The two strangers exchange a glance across the bar and within a wink become intimate friends; hanging out and sharing private jokes.

Under Coppola’s expert direction, Murray gives the performance of his career and lights up the screen with his legendary dry humour. Hollywood princess Scarlett Johansson {PIC} proves that she is more than just a pretty face and demonstrates great depth and tenderness. "Let's not ever come back here," she whispers. "Because it'll never be as much fun again."

Who would have guessed Sofia Coppola could direct comedy? This lightness of touch wasn't obvious from her admirable, but self-consciously acute debut, The Virgin Suicides. Lost in Translation is a modern, sexy film that floats by like a dream; just when you are starting to get into it, it’s gone.

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)

Director: Miranda July

Stars: Miranda July, John Hawkes

 “We have a whole life to live together you fucker, but it can't start until you call.”

Multi-winner at Cannes and Sundance among others, Me and You and Everyone We Know is a fascinating and strangely beautiful debut from performance artist Miranda July. Richard, a single father and department store shoe salesman, begins a reluctant courtship with an isolated, lonely video artist. In her own dysfunctional world, Christine acts entirely on impulse, connects intimately with a man she has just encountered, and falls in love.

Life is not rosy for Richard’s young sons. His fourteen year old has been seduced by 2 feisty schoolgirls with a cross to bear, Meanwhile seven year old computer whiz, Robby, enters into an online flirtation with a mysterious older woman, culminating later in an uncomfortable yet touching scene. July’s delivers sensitive direction throughout and her cast of unknowns shine as lost individuals, searching for their own fleeting moment of connection.

July is the real star - her innocent, playful appeal and her precondition for inserting herself in bizarre situations make for the main appeal of this quirky, unpredictable and highly original film – the kind of film that will divide audiences.