The Adjustment Bureau's whole premise is this. David and Elise meet in a bathroom one night, in what was meant to be a chance encounter. But the titular bureau tries to keep them from reuniting, out of fear of what effect it will have on the plan. David and Elise ended up together in the original plan, and remnants of this keep bringing them together.
The two teen protagonists of the Mexican film Amar Te Duele (which appropriately translates as Love Hurts).
Bonnie & Bonnie: Yara and Kiki can't openly be together, since Yara's family doesn't approve of her being with a woman. They run away together, but sadly Kiki is killed.
Bram Stoker's Dracula: Dracula and his wife Elisabeta. Upon hearing false news of his death, she killed herself, and he became a vampire in retaliation. He falls in love with her reincarnation - Mina Harker. But as he's a vampire, and she is married to another, it doesn't end well.
The Bride With White Hair has Yi-Hang, a swordsman in the Wudang Sect, falling in love with Ni-Chang, an orphaned warrior who's working for the evil cult his sect are fighting. He betrays her at the end of the film because of the mistaken belief she killed everyone in his sect.
The Bridges of Madison County: Francesca and Robert have a passionate four-day love affair, but they cannot be together since Francesca is married and does not want to leave her husband and children. They never see each other again, but still love each other deeply their whole lives.
Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar from Brokeback Mountain due to society's homophobia.
The Bubble (2006): The lovers, besides both being men, are an Israeli and a Palestinian; the latter of which is being pressured into an arranged heterosexual marriage.
Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam: Nate and Dana are from opposing musical camps led by two former bandmates turned rivals. Added points that Dana is the daughter of Camp Star's leader, and Nate is the nephew of Camp Rock's leader.
Chevalier (2022): Saint-Georges and Marie-Joséphine. She's white, rich, and married; he's black, the illegitimate son of a slave, and a self-made-man, it's 19th century France — you get the picture. Despite their romantic affair, they don't end up together.
In Aquaman (2018), Arthur's parents are Atlanna, an Atlantean Queen, and Thomas, a human lighthouse keeper. Their happy relationship was sadly only able to last for a few years before Atlanna was forced to return home. After marrying King Orvak and giving birth to Orm, she was executed by being thrown into the Trench. Despite this, Thomas continues to wait at the docks every sunrise, hoping to see her again. Fortunately, they do.
Indian movie, Ek Duje Ke Liye (transl: Made For Each Other). Vasu and Sapna are neighbours who fall in love by chance. However, since they belong to different backgrounds, their love is vehemently opposed by their respective families. Eventually, the young couple are forced with the contract that they must not contact each other for one year. If they still want to marry each other after this period, they may do so. However, the parents have no intention of keeping their side of the bargain and exploit the contract to create misunderstandings. Towards the end, after surmounting many ordeals, Vasu and Sapna are finally reunited... during their dying moments. Sapna laments over their fate, stating that the whole world is opposed towards their love. The dying couple commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, into the sea.
Matias and Maria from The Elite Squad. He was a cop. She had drug connections. Their relationship could never have worked.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: Dumbledore and Grindlewald can't be together ever again, because of the latter's campaign for war against the Muggles. Now, they are destined to fight each other.
An old Soviet film Forty-first, set during the Russian Civil War. A Red Army sniper girl and a 'White' lieutenant are stranded together on an island in the Aral Sea and fall in love. It does not end well.
The Generation Gap has the two protagonists, respectively a high-school dropout-slash-biker punk, and a young teenage girl from a rich, overly-controlling family, being in love with each other. After their respective families prevents them from even meeting each other, they decide an Elopement is the best solution.
Terry Turner and Eve Wilson from Go West (1940) are in love with one another, but they are members of a pair of Feuding Families. Terry plans on selling Dead Man's Gulch for a fortune to prove to her grandfather that he can provide for her, unaware that he had already had given it to the Panello Brothers as collateral.
Invoked in Heathers. Everyone in town thinks the two dead high school football players killed themselves because they were gay lovers who believed that the community would never accept them. Everyone, that is, except for the two people who murdered them and forged the suicide note that lead the town to believe that two heterosexual football players were secretly gay lovers.
Kaji and Michiko of The Human Condition. Kaji's only motivation to go on is to get back to his love, but his humanity is continually tested.
Peeta and Katniss from The Hunger Games. When Peeta reveals in his pre-game interview that he is in love with Katniss she thinks he is deliberately invoking this trope (and it is indeed mentioned by name by the show host). She later plays it up for all it's worth to help save her own life, never realizing that Peeta was telling the truth and honestly loves her.
Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. He does everything he can to ensure her survival in the Games, coming to care for her more than just for the prize winning. In time, their friendship turns romantic after the two reunite in District 12. Their love ends, violently and bitterly when Lucy Gray realizes she can never trust Coriolanus, after learning he had set up Sejanus with the jabberjay recording, leading to his hanging. In turn she abandons Snow, and sets a trap with one of her pet snakes to punish him, causing him in rage to try and shoot her down after catching a glimpse of her in the forest.In turn the loss and "betrayal" by Lucy Gray, hardens Snow significantly.
President Snow: It's the things we love the most that destroy us.
Ladyhawke - the title character Isabeau and her lover Captain Navarre travel together but only ever set eyes upon each other for the briefest moment because due to a curse, Isabeau turns into a hawk at dawn and Navarre turns into a wolf at sunset. The movie is all about them and Navarre's companion, Philippe, trying to go Screw Destinyand break the curse itself. It works in the end.
Listen to Your Heart: Victoria, Ariana's mother, tries everything she can to keep her from being with Danny, who's not good enough in Victoria's view. They split up, but then get back together after discovering just how she'd sabotaged things. However, then Danny dies of cancer.
Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter in the CaptainAmericafilms. Minutes after their first kiss during World War II, Steve sacrifices himself to save the Eastern United States and is presumed dead. When he returns from his coma in the modern day, Peggy is bedridden from old age and has Alzheimer's (after having lived a heroic and fruitful life otherwise), thus preventing her from permanently retaining the knowledge that he's alive. She then dies in Civil War, leaving Steve heartbroken. Her own TV series depicts her moving on from this and finding a Second Love, but only after a very long grieving period.
Infinity War: Wanda Maximoff and Vision just cannot be happy together. In Civil War, they're separated on opposite sides of the "war" despite their obvious feelings for each other, and the enforcement of the Accords drives Wanda into hiding. Infinity War reveals that they've had two years of sweet stolen moments together, but their happiness soon comes to an end when Vision finds out he’s #1 on Thanos’ hitlist due to possessing the Mind Stone, and has to talk Wanda into killing him. His friends try their hardest to spare him that fate, but she is eventually forced to concede and kill him by her own hand. And then watch Thanos resurrect him and brutally murder him again right in front of her. Come WandaVision, she discovers he bought property for them to live in together and obviously intended to marry her, and she breaks down in explosive grief at the crushing realization of the life they never got to have. Her powers magically create a perfect replica of him that later also dies when she has to dissolve her magic hold over the town of Westview. The two simply cannot catch a break, in the mainline movies or even seemingly in any alternate universes.
In Metropolis, Freder is the son of the evil Capitalist overlord, and Maria is a young Socialist reformer. It turns out okay, though.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, this is shown in the form of three women: Hatsumomo, Mameha and Sayuri. Hatsumomo was in love with a baker but was forbidden by Mother to never see him again, because as a geisha, she mustn't give her body up to men who can't earn enough money. Mameha was hinted to have loved the Baron at one point but had long given up that emotion. And the last one is Sayuri who had loved the Chairman at first sight and from that moment on, did everything she could to meet him again. Like the others, she was doomed not to have a future with him. However, Sayuri earned her happy ending as the Chairman reciprocated her love and they remained together.
Moulin Rouge! tells the story of penniless writer Christian falling for high class prostitute and dancer Satine. She is promised to the Duke who will fund the titular club, and what's more is that Satine has tuberculosis. Christian also opens the story stating "the woman I love is dead."
The lovers in My Beautiful Laundrette are maximally star-crossed. One is from a tradition-minded Pakistani family, the other runs with National Front skinheads, and both are boys... But it's subverted in that there's no angst, there's minimal bitching about their star-crossed status, and at the end they end up together, realistically happy, without ever telling anyone about their relationship.
The Irish film The Nephew is about an African-American boy going to live with his Irish uncle after his mother's death. It's later revealed that his mother was in a forbidden relationship with another man called Joe Bradynote This would have been in the 1960s or 70s when a woman could be sent to the Magdalene Laundries if she had premarital sex and moved to America to escape her family's persecution. It's later discovered that she sent several letters to Joe, but her brother kept them.
A still-controversial example is The Night Porter, which depicts a rekindled sadomasochistic relationship between Max, a former SS officer (Dirk Bogarde) and Lucia, a concentration camp survivor.
Wu Luan, originally with Wan, and then with Qing in Legend of the Black Scorpion. The crossing of their stars in both cases is highlighted by the fact that in the scenes where the couples are closest to realizing their mutual affection, Wu Luan and Wan/Qing are both wearing all white and moving together in a synchronized fashion. Wu Luan spars with Wan and performs a dance with Qing. And then everything falls apart.
Tristan and Susannah in Legends of the Fall. Susannah arrives as his brother Samuel's fiancée, but he's killed in WW1. Tristan and Susannah begin a passionate affair - but he breaks it off and runs away. By the time he returns, she has married his other brother Alfred (but is miserable). Tristan ends up Happily Married to another woman, but she too is killed. After Susannah makes one more attempt to reconcile with Tristan, she ends up Spurned into Suicide.
In One Way Passage, Dan is an escaped prisoner being taken back to San Francisco from Shanghai, to be executed. While onboard the ship he falls in love with beautiful Joan—who has a terminal illness and will die in a matter of weeks. Cue tragic romance.
In Partition, 38-year-old Hindu Gayan Singh falls in love with 17-year-old Muslim girl Naseem Khan, set against the dramatic backdrop of the Partition of India.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Marianne and Héloïse, both due to Héloïse's impending marriage and there's being a same-sex relationship. They are parted in the end.
Jack and Elizabeth are a tame version in A Royal Night Out. They become friends during VE Night and it's implied they fall in love. But is Elizabeth is the future Queen of England and Jack is a Lower-Class Lout. They part in the morning on bittersweet terms.
The Sessions: Cheryl initially starts out as just a sex surrogate for Mark, but they end up developing genuine feelings for each other, something that complicates both Cheryl's personal and professional life, as she's Happily Married and falling in love with a client is massively unprofessional. She eventually cuts her and Mark's sessions from the planned six down to four, since their emotional attraction to each other is too much of a boundary. They both move on, with Mark later getting into a happy long-term relationship with Susan while Cheryl stays married to her husband.
In Seventh Son, a witch-hunter falls in love with a half-witch. It turns out he's actually one, too, but they still decide they can't be together.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Ivan and Marichka have been inseparable since childhood, but after her father kills his father, they are forced apart. Ivan must leave the village to earn enough money for them to elope. While he is away, she dies in an accident, causing him to pine for her for the rest of his life.
Jamal and Latika in the movie Slumdog Millionaire - who were childhood friends drawn together by bad circumstances, and then forced apart by similar ways. At least until the very end of the movie.
In the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala are in a secret marriage that ends tragically. He's a Jedi and the Jedi Order forbids its members from falling in love and having families, while she has to protect her reputation as a senator. Due to their respective roles requiring them to be on different planets during the Clone Wars, they are often literally star-crossed. Even their romance theme was entitled: ''Across the Stars''. By Revenge of the Sith, they are on opposite sides of the political conflict regarding Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and Anakin ultimately betrays Padmé and everything she has fought for by turning to the dark side and strangling her which results in her death.
German corporal Walter and Jewish prisoner Ruth in Sterne. The title of the film means Stars, and is a reference both to this trope and to the infamous yellow stars.
Max and Elise in Suicide Kings, kept apart by the fact that Max's stepfather slept with Elise's mother and her father found out.
Buck and Nancy, the romantic leads of The Terror of Tiny Town, belong to families of feuding ranchers.
Rose DeWitt Bukater and Jack Dawson from Titanic (1997) are probably the second most infamous use of this trope, after the trope namer. To elaborate, Rose is from a high-class American family and Jack is a homeless pauper. What's more is that they're both passengers on the Titanic, which is doomed to sink and result in Jack's death. Of course, uniquely for this trope, despite Jack's death, Rose found a Second Love and by all accounts had a happy life with him. Also, depending how one interprets the ending, Rose passes away in her old age and is reunited with Jack and young again in the hereafter, which looks like the Titanic, as all the other souls give a standing ovation..
The backstory of Underworld (2003) has Lycan slave Lucian and Sonja, the daughter of Vampire Elder Viktor. To say it didn't go well would be an understatement, as its resolution (she was executed because of her miscegenation) sparked off the war between the Lycans and the Vampires that form the basis of the series.
Upside Down (2012), in which a man falls in love with a woman from an inverted universe.
Landon and Jamie in A Walk to Remember. She's got terminal illness so guess what happens.
Where Hands Touch: Leyna and Lutz are pretty much doomed from the start, as an interracial couple in Nazi Germany. They keep things completely secret as a result. Lutz dies in the end.
Subverted in The World of Suzie Wong. Robert is a middle-class American architect-turned-artist, while Suzie is a poor Hong Kong prostitute. Despite the movie illustrating their different backgrounds they both overcome them and learn to make their relationship work.
You Never Dreamed has Roma and Katya, whose families have bad blood between them and try to keep them apart.
