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Two films are used to explore the concept of alterity and its relationship to processes of idealisation and disillusionment in couple relationships. There is a developmental potential in love choices, whether fully realised or not. The first film, Into the Darkest Night (Pickering, 1977), set in the “sixties” era of alternative lifestyles, depicts idealisation and what Stendhal (1822) called crystallisation. The second, Shadowlands (1993), fictionalising the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, shows the growth of a capacity to move beyond idealising projections into love based on a capacity for altruism and alterity. Emmanuel Levinas’ concept of alterity, as involving paying homage to the unknowable enigma of the other, is used to understand such aspects of love as exemplified in the films.