Valentine’s Day brings a flurry of romantic comedies — cue He’s Just Not That Into You and the mothership of Feb. 14-themed films, Valentine’s Day.  Romantic comedies come with the territory, namely flowers and chocolate.

This year is no different.

Your cinematic options might seem limited in emotional depth this holiday. There’s The Vow, in which Channing Tatum — the epitome of eye candy — must win over his wife (Rachel McAdams) after she suffers severe memory loss.

There’s also This Means War, a crime romance film featuring two CIA operatives (Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) — more eye candy — vying for the affection of one blonde bombshell (Reese Witherspoon). Neither look that impressive.

It’s time to leave mindless tearjerkers behind and to head back to the basics. Valentine’s Day is, at least in theory, about love and the various forms that love can take.

To celebrate that love, here are a few films that take a more unconventional — and real — look at romance.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Low-key indie treasure Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which won an Oscar for  best original screenplay, expresses love not through the initial process of discovery, but through the realization of what has been lost.

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star as the introverted Joel and the peculiar Clementine, a bitter couple whose relationship has gone downhill, leading the pair to erase their memories of each other.

During the procedure, Joel realizes it’s better to retain his past because it contains good as well as bad memories. A fight against time follows as Joel attempts to escape the procedure and to preserve the love.

Director Michel Gondry’s cult classic takes a backward approach to romance, presenting it in a non-linear fashion. Told through a hodgepodge of memories — think (500) Days of Summer — Eternal Sunshine entices viewers with its heartbreaking thematic connection of particular moments throughout Joel and Clementine’s relationship. The viewer cannot help but be entranced because he or she has no idea what’s coming next: Will it be childhood memories, first dates, breakups or makeups?

Funnyman Carrey gives the performance of his career as the dark and suspicious Joel, and Winslet matches this excellence as the eccentric Clementine. The exemplary acting goes hand-in-hand with the awe-inspiring, non-consecutive series of events. And it’s all wrapped up nicely with a perfectly quirky and melancholic air.

Eternal Sunshine takes a stylistic approach to filmmaking. At its core, it is a love story that forces viewers to realize what’s right in front of them.

Brokeback Mountain

Ang Lee’s 2005 drama Brokeback Mountain was labeled as the “gay cowboy movie” through popular discourse.

This superficial assessment hardly does the director, the cast and the film justice. Brokeback Mountain stands apart as an honest and emotive tale of love.

This hot-topic film explores uncharted cinematic territory and gives new meaning to LGBT representations in cinema as it features Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) as Wyoming cowboys suffering from repressed romantic feelings for each other.

Oscar winner for best director, best original score and best adapted screenplay, Brokeback Mountain expresses a sense of true cinematic genius through its stunning cinematography, especially evident in expansive shots of the beautiful Wyoming landscape.

Ledger and Gyllenhaal deliver compelling performances as a distraught couple fighting to balance their feelings and societal norms. Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway make their marks as brilliant supporting  actresses cast by portraying the wives who have been pushed aside and now act as covers to their husbands’ forbidden romance.

The melodrama takes an uncommon approach to love by media standards in the sense that Ennis and Jack’s relationship has rarely been addressed in film. This devastating relationship is what ultimately captures viewers.

Unconventionality aside, Brokeback Mountain candidly portrays two men fighting for each other despite societal norms, and this hopeless love makes the film incredibly romantic.

Talk to Her

Spanish filmmaker and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Pedro Almodóvar’s critically acclaimed film, Talk to Her (Habla con Ella), explores the relationship between women in comas and the men who love them.

To say the premise is obscure would be an understatement. This assessment, however, only applies to its concept, not to its execution.

The relationships are delicate, complex and beautifully developed. Darío Grandinetti delivers a subtle yet honest performance as Marco, a writer whose bullfighter girlfriend is in a coma after suffering an accident. Upon realizing that she had been cheating on him, he begins to fall in love with another comatose woman and must compete with a male nurse/friend for the unconscious woman’s affection.

In Almodóvar’s eccentric and unexpected style, this male-centric romantic melodrama is delivered with vibrant colors, suspenseful plot twists and surprising scandal. The unconventional love presented in Talk to Her might          not be ethical, and in fact leads to some serious criminal trouble, but effectively demonstrates one of the many forms that love can take. The film Talk to Her offers a unique approach and asks many questions about the definition of love.

Give your sweetheart the gift of a unique experience this Valentine’s Day. These unique romance films will certainly serve as a nice change of pace.