I was a little surprised to learn that the exhibition that gives The Broken Hearts Gallery its’ name is not a real thing in New York City. An abstract art gallery of relics from failed relationships as a means of encouraging healthy letting go and moving on, it’s an idea just strange and quirky enough to exist in a modern age -exactly the sort of local interest thing you wouldn’t be surprised to see written about in a cute article in the New Yorker, something which does happen in this film. Regardless of the reality of such a gallery, it speaks to debut writer-director Natalie Krinsky’s understanding of both New York culture and the myriad avenues of creative youth self-expression that her Broken Hearts Gallery registers as something intrinsically believable in a film with many less-believable elements.
That’s not a strike against The Broken Hearts Gallery; indeed it’s a romantic-comedy, where unbelievable is par for the course. It’s not even that outside the wheelhouse of the genre for the lead to have an artistic drive paired with a social conscientiousness that brings them fame within a particular niche -it is a strictly modern kind of fantasy that romantic comedies like to exploit. But there is something to this film that does genuinely set it apart.
Maybe it’s the millennials, particularly the leads being on the young-ish end of the millennial spectrum. I’m so used to seeing people in their early twenties playing high schoolers, as both leads Geraldine Viswanathan and Dacre Montgomery have in recent years, that it’s oddly unusual to see them in age appropriate parts here. That in itself lends the film a little more credence, but I think the biggest part of its charm emanates from Viswanathan. The Australian actress has been steadily on the rise the last few years (she was the star of the Sundance drama Hala a couple years ago), but for the limited exposure she has had, she makes the grand leap to comedic leading lady remarkably well. As Lucy, art gallery assistant with dreams of running her own, Viswanathan understands the language for the humour required of this part, has the cadence and physicality range for a variety of jokes, and strikes that right balance of genuine and irksome to be just endearing enough -this is a character who would have often been obnoxious in the hands of a lesser actress.
Montgomery, playing Nick, is good too for this type of romantic lead, cool and aloof and plenty sarcastic, and he shares a nice chemistry with Viswanathan. Molly Gordon and Hamiltons’ Phillipa Soo play Lucy’s high school friends and roommates (in typically, a far nicer apartment than three twenty-somethings in New York could likely afford), and they are certainly the most fun characters in the movie, as they comment on Lucy’s and their own love lives in a dynamic that feels very lived-in, if perhaps a tad sitcom-y (Gordons’ silent yet ever agreeable boyfriend Jeff especially fits that mould, but I love him). There’s also a surprising Bernadette Peters appearance as Lucy’s boss, and a cameo from an outrageous Emma Hunter that feels like purely an in-joke for the films’ Canadian viewers (Krinsky herself is Canadian).
The Broken Hearts Gallery also really does tap into something universal in its subject matter in an empathetic way. Who among us hasn’t been through a kind of heartache or had a relationship that meant a lot fall apart? How many have struggled to move on from such a thing? It’s why the idea of the gallery is so resonant to be true. And the movie allows that kind of pain a real weight, a sense of its importance, without being bogged down by the melancholy it invites. Interspersed throughout the film are little interviews with gallery donors -a mix of major and one-off characters- talking about a past relationship and their memento. They’re comic scenes, but the catharsis is real. The movie translates that, so that it genuinely works as a relief for those suffering a break-up.
There’s a curious warmth too, to go along with this lightness, to how much the world of the movie comes alive. A part of this is due to Krinsky populating her New York with a noticeably more diverse assortment of characters than you usually see in movies about the city; the presence of the likes of Utkarsh Ambudkar, Arturo Castro, and Ego Nwodim in roles that could so easily have just been white people, certainly makes the cosmopolitan environment feel more real. This distinct, perhaps idyllic New York atmosphere is intoxicating, and there’s a real affection for both the city and its’ youth culture on display.
It’s something to focus on when the script gets particularly weak in sections, and the plot ascribes to more and more crutches of the genre. For the most part, the movie rises above a lot of these to the point you don’t really notice them, but the last act seriously falters off of plot contrivances that prove the narrative structure flimsy all along. Facets of characterization for Nick which should have been present from early on aren’t addressed until the last twenty minutes, at which point the film has the options of either doing something radically different for a romantic comedy (and that might have in fact supported its’ theme) or hastily rushing towards a traditional conclusion. Krinsky chooses the latter and in so doing reveals more tangibly the movies’ cracks, its’ ultimate generic features, and its’ missed opportunities.
This is not by any means an unconventional romantic-comedy; it sticks pretty close to the playbook especially in the end. But I do think it would be dishonest to say The Broken Hearts Gallery doesn’t offer something new in the way it deals with the topic of heartbreak and espouses the virtues of turning emotional pain into something creative. It’s also just a great star-making vehicle for Geraldine Viswanathan and a likeable New York movie. Really, it is a movie all about turning bad things into something good, and I think that’s a kind of escapism we need right now.
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