The Essential Plotline Chapters
Chapter One: “I’m Only Here for the Job/School/Experience”
Via Netflix
Our heroine swears she’s here strictly for self-improvement. In Emily in Paris, it’s a marketing job. In Eat Pray Love, it’s a full-blown spiritual reboot.
She moves into lodgings that are charmingly imperfect: creaky stairs, low ceilings, a leaky pipe or two, but always a view worth posting to Instagram.
Older examples: Notting Hill (American actress in London), Under the Tuscan Sun (divorcee buying a villa in Italy).
Chapter Two: “I Wasn’t Going to Fall in Love”
Via Netflix
Enter The Local: handsome, sweater-clad, emotionally complicated. He’s often nursing a tragic backstory or a mysterious secret. They meet cute or meet grumpy. Think spilled coffee (Me Before You), sarcastic banter (Notting Hill), or clashing over Shakespeare (My Oxford Year).
She insists she’s too busy for romance. The audience knows she’s lying.
Chapter Three: “I Fell in Love”
Via Netflix
This is the Instagram montage portion. They ride bikes on cobblestones, stroll through fresh markets, cook together (badly), and “accidentally” get caught in the rain. The city isn’t just a setting. It’s the third lead.
Chapter Four: “Crisis!”
Here comes the big reveal:
He’s engaged.
She’s leaving.
He’s secretly royalty.
She’s up for a dream job back home.
Maybe all four at once. Feelings are bruised, suitcases are packed, and it’s raining again.
Chapter Five: “The Grand Gesture”
Via Netflix
Location is key: train stations, airports, cliffside proposals - the more public, the better. Someone yells, “Wait!” A heartfelt confession happens. Cue a kiss, camera spin, swelling soundtrack.
Why It Feels Stuck on Repeat
The problem isn’t the idea of romance abroad, it’s the recycling of beats without adding any new flavor. Too often, the protagonist’s “self-discovery” is reduced to the fantasy of being the emotional center of a picturesque world built for her benefit.
Even BookTok-inspired adaptations tend to flatten the nuance of their novels into postcard-perfect clichés.
What Works (and How to Do It Better)
1. Make the Romance Serve the Character Arc
Bridget Jones’s Diary remains one of the gold standards for romantic adaptations because Bridget’s growth is the heart of the story. Yes, she finds love, but she also gains self-respect, friendship, and a career breakthrough.
2. Let the Setting Shape the Story
In Crazy Rich Asians, Singapore isn’t just a backdrop. The culture, traditions, and family dynamics are integral to the plot. Compare that to films where “foreign country” is shorthand for “market scene” and “rainy kiss.”
3. Give the Love Interest a Full Story
In Notting Hill, Hugh Grant’s character has his own goals and agency. Too often, the local love interest is just there to react to the heroine.
4. Dare to Surprise Us
Romance doesn’t always need a “together forever” ending to feel satisfying. La La Land’s bittersweet conclusion proved that sometimes the most romantic thing is letting go.
The BookTok Effect
BookTok - TikTok’s passionate, recommendation-driven book community, has supercharged this genre. Viral novels like People We Meet on Vacation (Emily Henry), One Italian Summer (Rebecca Serle), Love & Other Words (Christina Lauren), and Meet Me at the Lake (Carley Fortune) dominate feeds.
The pipeline is predictable:
Book goes viral → adaptation greenlit → trailer drops → everyone predicts the ending → audiences watch anyway for the vibes.
It’s a loop that rewards aesthetics and comfort over originality. That’s not inherently bad, but it explains why so many of these films feel like cousins at the same family reunion.
Final Thoughts
There’s nothing wrong with comfort-food romance. These films are the croissants of cinema: warm, predictable, and impossible to resist on the right day.
But the best love stories, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Crazy Rich Asians, and Before Sunrise, show us that a few simple changes can make the genre feel fresh again:
Give both characters agency.
Let the setting live and breathe beyond its tourist appeal.
Take a risk with the ending.
Until then, we’ll keep getting more Americans abroad, more brooding locals, more rain-soaked misunderstanding, and yes, we’ll keep watching.
