Awards Season: Why Romance Matters at the Oscars (Even When It’s Not Obvious)

Why Romance Matters at the Oscars (Even When It’s Not Obvious)

When Hamnet earned multiple Oscar nominations this year, the conversation quickly turned to its historical significance, its literary pedigree, and Jessie Buckley’s devastating performance. What few people discussed was the beating heart of the film: a marriage shaped by love, loss, and the silences that define intimacy. It’s a perfect example of how the 2026 Oscars celebrate romance — just not in the way most people expect.

Every awards season, the same question circles film Twitter, book clubs, and group chats: Where are the love stories? This year’s nominations, stacked with ambitious epics and technically dazzling achievements, seem light on traditional romance. Yet if you look closely, love is everywhere — driving characters’ choices, shaping their grief, defining their entire lives.

Romance as Narrative Engine, Not Genre Decoration

When people imagine “romantic films,” they picture candlelit dinners, dramatic kisses in the rain, sweeping orchestral scores. But the Academy has always favoured something more complicated: love that’s restrained, painful, or impossible. Romance at the Oscars shows up in marriages under strain, in longing that spans decades, in connections that destroy as much as they sustain.

Consider this year’s slate. Hamnet explores how shared grief can both unite and alienate a married couple. Several war dramas use romantic bonds to give weight to impossible choices. Even films about artistic obsession or historical upheaval rely on love — fulfilled or denied — to make their stakes matter emotionally.

Without these romantic undercurrents, many Oscar contenders would feel hollow. We care about a character’s ambition because we understand who they’re leaving behind. We feel the weight of a moral dilemma because we see how it affects the people they love. Romance doesn’t sit on the sidelines; it quietly drives the story forward.

Literary Adaptations: Where Love Hides in Plain Sight

The strongest romantic storytelling at this year’s Oscars traces its roots to novels — a medium where interior emotions and relationships naturally dominate. Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s book, demonstrates how literary sources give filmmakers permission to explore intimacy without spectacle. The relationship between husband and wife isn’t flashy, but it’s devastatingly real: two people trying to stay connected while processing unbearable loss in completely different ways.

This pattern repeats throughout Oscar history. Atonement won critical acclaim for its exploration of love interrupted by misunderstanding and war. Call Me by Your Name earned nominations by treating romance as atmosphere and memory rather than plot. These films succeed because their source material gives space to longing, regret, and emotional restraint — the very qualities that make romance feel authentic rather than manufactured.

Literary adaptations also provide cover. A film “based on the acclaimed novel” can centre romantic relationships while still being marketed as a prestige drama, allowing the Academy to reward love stories without explicitly calling them that.

The Label Problem: Why Romance Struggles for Recognition

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Stories led primarily by love — especially those centred on women — are often dismissed as “too small,” “too sentimental,” or “not serious enough” for major awards consideration.

Yet when those same emotional arcs appear in films about war, art, or historical tragedy, they suddenly become worthy of recognition. A soldier’s love for someone back home elevates a war film. An artist’s romantic obsession adds depth to a biopic. A doomed relationship gives a period piece its emotional resonance.

The Academy celebrates romance constantly — as long as it’s embedded in something else. Love can motivate, complicate, or haunt, but it seemingly can’t stand alone as a film’s primary purpose. The genre hierarchy remains: romance supports “important” stories, but the stories themselves are rarely important.

What This Year’s Nominations Reveal

The 2026 slate demonstrates how effectively romance operates in disguise. Films driven by obsession, memory, sacrifice, or lifelong devotion all rely on romantic tension, even when love isn’t mentioned in their marketing. Characters cross oceans, betray their ideals, or cling to hope long past reason — all because of who they love or who they’ve lost.

Remove the romantic elements from these films and watch them collapse. The choices that define the narrative lose their emotional logic. The moments that resonate with audiences fall flat. Romance, in these cases, isn’t decoration or a subplot. It’s infrastructure.

What We Hope to See Next

Looking ahead, there’s a growing appetite for adaptations that embrace love as their central theme rather than hiding it. Contemporary and classic novels offer rich romantic material that aligns perfectly with the Academy’s evolving tastes: thoughtful, character-driven, emotionally resonant stories about intimacy shaped by class, culture, or time; relationships that unfold slowly rather than explosively; love that resists neat resolutions.

Books like Sally Rooney’s Normal People have already proven how modern romantic storytelling can achieve both critical acclaim and cultural relevance. Classic works like Wuthering Heights continue to offer templates for how obsession and desire drive compelling narratives. The question isn’t whether these stories deserve recognition — it’s whether the industry will finally give them room to breathe without requiring they cosplay as something else.

Romance Doesn’t Need Permission to Matter

The Oscars don’t ignore romance; they reward it in disguise. As audiences increasingly crave emotional authenticity over empty spectacle, perhaps it’s time to broaden how we talk about love in prestige cinema.

Romance doesn’t need grand gestures or happy endings to be powerful. Sometimes it’s a shared silence. A missed chance. A bond that endures despite everything else falling apart. These are the love stories already winning at the Academy Awards — even when nobody calls them that.

Recommended Reading & Viewing

For those who want to explore how romance thrives — quietly, painfully, beautifully — in Oscar-adjacent storytelling:

📚 Books:

• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell — A masterclass in restrained emotional storytelling showing how marriage and grief create devastating intimacy
• Atonement by Ian McEwan — Love interrupted by time, misunderstanding, and war; a reminder of why tragic romance earns critical acclaim
• Normal People by Sally Rooney — Modern love, miscommunication, and how romance shapes identity across years
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë — Literature’s most intense study of obsession and desire, proving dark romance never dates

🎥 Films:

• Call Me by Your Name (2017) — Romance as atmosphere and emotional honesty rather than plot
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) — Love as memory and longing, the kind of quiet intensity that the awards bodies admire
• Blue Valentine (2010) — Unflinching romantic realism showing how love evolves and sometimes erodes
• The English Patient (1996) — Epic storytelling and tragic romance coexisting, winning big at the Oscars

Stories You Might Enjoy

If this exploration of hidden romance resonates with you, here are two stories that explore similar themes, plus a FREE novella with extended chapters:❤️💕❤️‍🔥

Midsummer — A novella set in summer 1595, imagining Shakespeare’s final season with his son Hamnet while composing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s a meditation on creativity, family, and the relationships that shape art.

Finding You in Hollywood — A contemporary romance exploring whether love can survive the clash between fame and privacy. Hollywood A-lister Jaron Webber wants something real; London-based Caitlin Elmore wants nothing to do with celebrity life. Their story asks whether connection matters more than compatibility when the world is watching.

FREE Novella: Hollywood Hearts: The Ever After of Finding You in Hollywood — In the days that followed their heartfelt exchange of “I love yous,” Jaron and Caitlin found themselves swept up in a whirlwind of excitement and anticipation. The buzz of the upcoming Oscars adds an extra layer of glamour and frenzy to their already extraordinary lives.

London With You — Although not set around the Oscars, Hollywood indirectly beckons. It’s a contemporary romance that follows Jared Avery and Aimee Carlos. Their worlds collide in London, where a chance encounter sparks intense chemistry. Jared Avery is a charismatic Hollywood mega-star at the peak of his fame. Despite the spotlight and success, he’s grounded and looking for something real beyond red carpets and paparazzi. Aimee Carlos, a brilliant gamer and coder who works behind the scenes at Streamline Games and cherishes her anonymity and quiet life.

Midsummer, Finding You in Hollywood and London With You - Available at all your favourite retailers. For your free copy of Hollywood Hearts, get in touch.

As I live in the UK, visit the BBC for the complete 2026 Oscar nominations and BAFTA nominations from Forbes here.

Enjoy! Ally x