The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020)

Yes, this is going to be one of my rather impulsive movie reviews. But this is different because I did plan to do a movie review, but it was to be of a different movie. A classic comedy film, and last minute, I decided to write on this instead because I happened to come across a random person seeing it sometime this evening.

The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020)

Directed by Natalie Krinsky in her directorial debut, this film tells the story of Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan) who is a young assistant in a gallery at NYC, and somehow, she ends up losing both her job and her obnoxious boyfriend at the gallery’s opening night. Drunk and filled with despair, she ends up getting into the wrong car think it’s her Lyft. Turns out it’s not. It’s Nick’s (Dacre Montgomery) car.

But away from that, Lucy has a problem. She keeps a memory from all her relationships. At least one of them, and somehow, that has not allowed her fully move on. So, as she fills her days sulking, and drowning in self-pity, she does not realize that the very things that are the bane of her existence would be her redemption.

My Thoughts and Rating

So, I’ll start by saying that I saw this film in 2021, or so, and now I’m trying to recall what phase of my life I was in then. I know it’s about that time I had almost nothing going on for me, and wasn't even in a relationship, so I wouldn’t say I was broken hearted or anything, lol, but I can say that I was wallowing in nearly the same pit of despair as the protagonist, albeit for a different reasons. Still, it made her relatable to me.

You can see, then, that I’m talking about this with rose-coloured glasses, but bear with me. This is your typical chick flick by all standards. The ideal rom-com with all the quite foreseeable tropes, but I think it’s a bit more than the average chick-flick. It contains all the authenticity of a movie that is trying to chart its own path even though it’s in a quite overused genre.

I wouldn’t say I was the biggest fan of Lucy. I could even say she was a tad selfish, even though some may judge her as charismatic. But she’s not a terrible actor. She’s actually quite good, and I would have said then that she had a great future in the movie industry. Same as the male lead, and more than anything, she was normal, by most standards, which was new for me because Hollywood has this thing of making the female lead needlessly “eccentric.”

The other actors were great as well. There was a bit of terrible acting at some point, where you could clearly see that it’s acting, but they weren’t a lot, and the good sides glossed those terrible sides quite effectively. The characters were unique, and I did more than giggle severally.

I think my key takeaway from this film, as well as the message I believe it’s trying to pass, is that somehow, we may consciously or unconsciously be holding onto bits and pieces from our previous relationships, and somehow it taints or affects our current lives and current relationships, however, we have the power to turn those memories or memorabilia into something useful by simply letting go of it.

The concept of a broken hearts gallery was distinctive, unique, and extremely symbolic. I loved it, and I was glad to see it. The ending wasn’t terrible. There were only slight misunderstandings and not the gross betrayal that tends to happen to the leads in a chick-flick, and they just end up moving on unrealistically from it. This one made a lot more sense. Predictability, notwithstanding.

Sad it didn’t do so well at Box Office, and it’s rather one of the underrated films of Hollywood. A good 6.5/10. Highly recommended if you’re going through a heart break, lol. And now that that’s out of the way, I can focus on the real comedies subsequently.

Jhymi

_{Images from IMDB.}

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