“Fools Rush In” (1997)
Three months after having a one night-stand with Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), Isabel Fuentes (Salma Hayek) discovers that she’s pregnant. Alex and Isabel decide to marry but not without some cultural collisions. Whitman is white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), and Isabel is Mexican-American and Catholic. Neither feels at home in the other’s family. Alex’s father cracks a joke about Isabel being a housekeeper, and Isabel’s belligerent father goes after Alex with a baseball bat during one scene. Can Alex and Isabel’s shaky bond survive these tensions? Set mostly on the Arizona-Nevada border, the film is reportedly based, in part, on the real-life romance and marriage of Anna Maria Davis and Douglas Draizin, who produced “Fools Rush In.”
“Liberty Heights” (1999)
Warner Brothers
Set in the 1950s and based partly on writer-director Barry Levinson’s life, “Liberty Heights” follows Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster), a Jewish-American teen from suburban Baltimore. When Ben’s school district racially integrates, he’s instantly drawn to a black girl named Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson). In addition to their mutual attraction, the two share similar musical tastes, but Sylvia’s father forbids her to associate with a white boy. This doesn’t faze Sylvia or dampen her romance with Ben. But when the two of them attend a James Brown concert, they’re (in a complex plot twist) kidnapped. If you like “Liberty Heights,” you might also like teen interracial romance films “A Bronx Tale,” "Flirting," "Save the Last Dance," "O" and “ZebraHead.”
“Something New” (2006)
Focus Features
Tired of her business with no pleasure lifestyle, Los Angeles career woman Kenya McQueen (Sanaa Lathan) decides to take a risk in love and go on a blind date with landscaping architect Brian Kelly (Simon Baker). When she meets Brian and discovers that he’s white, she’s taken aback. Still, she does need some landscaping work done on her home and hires Brian to get it done. The two soon begin a fling, but not without some reservations on Kenya’s part. She wonders what friends and family will think, which causes tension with the unconventional Brian. To boot, the stresses from her accounting firm, where she’s set to make partner, take their toll on her relationship. All in all, “Something New” is a rom-com with an interracial twist.
