Rating: B-
Despite our cultural fetishization of being twenty-something, it’s not a decade I’d like to relive. Even through the rose-colored lenses of nostalgia those first trepidatious steps into adulthood are fraught with missteps, awkward moments, big mistakes, and broken hearts. No thank you. I’m much more comfortable with my complacently boring pushing 40 life. Bad knees and nicely developing middle aged belly and all.
But I guess all the negative experiences that rocked my decade as a twenty something were, on reflection, beautifully formative. Philosophically, we can’t be who we are without having been through what we were. And for all my jaded, well-into-adulthood cynicism, I can recognize and appreciate how all of my missteps and bad decisions molded me into the person I am now, for better or for worse.
And that’s what writer/director Natalie Krinsky captures so delightfully in her feature debut, The Broken Hearts Gallery. Not only is this a film that oozes with effortless charm and effervescent adorability, it’s also an accurate ode to life’s second most awkward stage of development.
Geraldine Viswanathan stars as Lucy, a mildly eccentric everywoman who maintains a sort of shrine to lost loves, much to the chagrin of her friends and roommates, Amanda and Nadine (Molly Gordon and Phillip Soo). Seemingly on the verge of having it all, her world is crushed when her boyfriend Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar) breaks up with her on the same night that she loses her job as a gallery assistant. Ravaged by the depression of grief, she meets the sexy would-be hotelier, Nick (Dacre Montgomery) who, against his better judgment, allows Lucy to set up a public art installation for mementos of broken hearts in his in-progress hotel, which catches the New York City art world by storm. On the verge of artistic superstardom, can Lucy manage to live her dream and find love?
The Broken Hearts Gallery is the kind of romcom whose conclusion is foregone before the film even starts. But like so much of the twenty-something experience, it’s less about the destination than it is the journey it takes to get there. Audiences will no doubt know exactly what is up from the film’s meet-cute, during which Lucy, mistaking his car for her Lyft, gets into Nick’s backseat ready to spill her emotional guts to a stranger.
That’s just the kind of woman she is, though. Lucy wears her heart directly on her sleeve and is, above all else, shamelessly herself. Viswanathan portrays this authentically and, quite often, hilariously, as Lucy tries to navigate the various ordeals of growing into one’s own adulthood. The actress, who previously made something of a splash in the 2018 sexcom Blockers, is absolutely delightful and carries the entirety of The Broken Hearts Gallery on her capable shoulders.
Krinsky’s script, meanwhile, is a wonderful step up for the writer, who cut her teeth in television writing for shows like Gossip Girl and Grey’s Anatomy. Like the characters she’s written, her story is wonderfully authentic and feels as though it could be the perspective of any current or former 26 year old. All of the heartache and awkwardness is there, but so too is the fun and carefree levity that does help define that stage of life.
While it certainly won’t be an award winner or classic, The Broken Hearts Gallery is still a satisfying delight full of laughs and charms, making it an almost perfect movie for a date or night in. Even while traversing the familiar and predictable beats of a romcom, Krinsky and cast manage to create a feel good journey that perfectly encapsulates that time in everyone’s life when you feel so close to figuring it all out even if you can’t quite get there. As much as I know that’s not a time I want to relive, The Broken Hearts Gallery serves as a wonderful reminder that our journeys matter so much more than our outcomes, and that without them we could never become that for which we are destined.
The Broken Hearts Gallery is now playing in theaters everywhere.
