When things in the real world start feeling, well, a little too real, there is no better way to escape than to dive into a celluloid world of glamorous interiors and extremely stylish people dealing with diamond-crusted dilemmas. Behold our (ever growing) list of the best luxury movies.
High Society (1956)
Starring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, this is perhaps one of the most glamorous films of all time. It reimagines the 1940s film The Philadelphia Story and tells the tale of the socialite Tracy Samantha Lord (Kelly) as she grapples with a love triangle. Just as the young and glamorous divorcee is preparing to get married to the well-regarded but deeply boring George Kittredge, she discovers that her ex-husband and jazz musician CK Dexter-Haven (Bing Crosby) has returned to town to organise a music festival. To make matters more complicated, a journalist — Macaulay “Mike” Connor (Frank Sinatra) — has been invited to cover the nuptials, which seem increasingly likely to go awry. The Oscar-winning romantic comedy features the golden-era Hollywood actors in their full, fabulous glory in a film that features life-affirming lines such as “I’m sensational, everybody says so.” If you’re after grand Rhode Island estates, original jazz numbers by Louis Armstrong (who also appears in the film) and lots of transatlantic accents, this is the film for you.
Watch the trailer here
Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Based on the 1945 novel by Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited stars a very young (and very attractive) Matthew Goode. Goode plays Charles Ryder, an army officer in the Second World War awaiting his battle orders at a temporary camp at the Brideshead estate. But this isn’t the first time he has been to Brideshead. Cue misty reveries about his first visit, before the war, as a guest of the wealthy Flyte family, who own the estate. Ryder had been invited to stay by his Oxford chum, Sebastian (Ben Whishaw). Sexual, class and religious tensions abound. There is much lolling on lawns and many longing gazes across the crystal.
Watch the trailer here
The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Gilded American youth tan themselves, buzz about on speedboats and listen to jazz on the 1950s Italian Riviera — who wouldn’t want in? In this 1999 film based on Patricia Highsmith’s book of the same name, Matt Damon plays the titular Tom Ripley. He is sent to Italy to retrieve a wayward heir, Dickie Greenleaf (played by Jude Law), but becomes so enamoured of his charge’s glittering and idle life that he decides he wants it for himself.
Watch the trailer here
Saltburn (2023)
A modern mash-up of Brideshead and The Talented Mr Ripley, Saltburn is a 21st-century imagining of the outsider’s tale. Golden boy Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) befriends Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a scholarship student struggling to find his way at Oxford. Oliver is invited to spend the summer holidays at the Catton family pile, Saltburn, where he becomes a fascinating plaything for the eccentric family. But once Oliver has had a taste (in more ways than one) of the high life, a return to the drab mediocrity of his former existence is no longer an option. We’d recommend watching this one with anyone but your parents.
Watch the trailer here
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The Great Gatsby (1974, 2013)
“They’re such beautiful shirts!” cries Daisy Buchanan as Jay Gatsby flings the contents of his wardrobe in the air. We feel you, Daisy. Who hasn’tsobbed at the sight of a really lovely silk shirt? The Great Gatsby is F Scott Fitzgerald’s great American fable. Can money fill the gaping hole in man’s soul? Can it at least help you get the girl? Gatsby thinks so. There are two cinematic versions: the 1974 film with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, and the 2013 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. Both feature a massive Hamptons estate, wild parties, ziggurats of champagne flutes. And that deep, desperate emptiness beneath it all. Maybe just concentrate on the shirts.
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Philandering 18th-century French aristocrats plot one another’s social ruin at their bucolic country estates and the opera. What could be more magnifique? First we had the book, the 1782 novel Les liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, which was then turned into a play, and later this 1988 film featuring John Malkovich, Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s all vast gowns, heaving bosoms, Uma Thurman’s buttocks, Keanu Reeves in tight silk knickerbockers … Sorry, we digress — at heart this is a chilling tale about social hierarchy.
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Also based on Les liaisons dangereuses, this 1999 film stars Nineties dreamboat Ryan Phillippe playing Sebastian Valmont, a wealthy teen living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Sebastian’s stepsister turned lover, bets him that he won’t be able to take their headmaster’s daughter’s virginity before the start of the next school year. The virgin in question is Annette (Reese Witherspoon), who recently wrote an article proclaiming her premarital chastity in Seventeen magazine. A cocktail of deceit, teens driving expensive cars and mahogany decor is served up. Heady.
Watch the trailer here
Wall Street (1987)
An Eighties thriller set on the mean streets of Manhattan, Wall Street tells the story of an ambitious junior stock broker, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), who will do whatever it takes to impress his ruthless mentor, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). The greedy Fox quickly finds himself caught up in an insider trading scheme that threatens to ruin him and his hardworking father, Carl Fox (Martin Sheen). The film, which won Douglas an Oscar for best actor and received multiple other award nominations, provides a window into the dangerously alluring extravagances of the time. Don’t worry, the mise en scène will not disappoint: greased-back hair, braces, old-school computers and a lot of screaming into landlines. Buy, buy!
Watch the trailer here
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street tells the true story of the disgraced Long Island financier Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio). Directed by Martin Scorcese, this 2013 film’s star-studded cast includes Matthew McConaughey, Margot Robbie and Jonah Hill, and traces Belfort’s demise as his career in the unregulated world of penny stocks leads to corruption, decadence and federal crime. The outfits are almost as good as the dialogue.
Watch the trailer here
Overboard (1987)
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In this film featuring Eighties power couple Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn the pair play unexpected lovers. Hawn is the heiress Joanna Stayton, an unlikeable socialite who loves her yacht, her clothes and very little else. When the boat is docked off the coast of Oregon, the carpenter and widower Dean Proffitt (Kurt Russell) arrives to remodel her closet but uses oak instead of cedar to do so. Unsatisfied with his work, Joanna refuses to pay. Later that night she falls into the water and wakes up in a hospital with — you guessed it — amnesia. Dean hears this on the news and decides to seek revenge by making the confused Joanna work off her debt to him. Chaos and a love affair ensue.
Watch the trailer here
Father of the Bride (1991)
The mother of the rom-com, the screenwriter Nancy Meyers, specialises in tales unfolding in large houses in picturesque Californian suburbs with gorgeous kitchens populated by even more gorgeous actors. Father of the Bride is no exception. In this 1991 film Steve Martin and Diane Keaton play a happy couple looking forward to welcoming their daughter, Annie (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), back from studying abroad only to find she got pregnant while she was away. Her parents are dismayed but console themselves by planning a humongous wedding with the help of Franck, the most fabulous wedding planner ever seen on screen.
Watch the trailer here
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Sofia Coppola created a macaron-fuelled confection with her telling of the tale of Marie Antoinette, one of the most extravagant women in history. While the 2006 film isn’t necessarily historically accurate, it is a visual feast. Marie Antoinette is played by a young Kirsten Dunst and the story follows the Austrian princess from her betrothal to the Dauphin of France, later Louis XVI, at 14 years old to her execution by guillotine more than two decades later during the French Revolution. Coppola’s signature indie-rock soundtrack is coupled with acres of rustling pastel-coloured silk and massive wigs, lapdogs and champagne. Eat cake while watching.
Watch the trailer here
