A kind of glossy romcom filtered through Lena Dunham’s Girls, Natalie Krinsky’s debut feature, The Broken Hearts Gallery, announces a sharp, smart, fun voice to the genre, a film knowing enough to have characters re-enact scenes from The Notebook yet open-hearted enough to bring the feels. It’s built around an unlikely but novel plot idea — an installation of mementoes for the lovelorn — that allows for a touching take on how we process break-ups and moving on. But perhaps most importantly, it also anoints Geraldine Viswanathan as a star in waiting.
Viswanathan is Lucy, a 26-year-old art gallery assistant so consumed by her romantic relationships that she hoards mementoes from every one; a plastic piggy bank, a Monopoly thimble, old shoe laces. After the latest split — her first Grown-Up Boyfriend (Utkarsh Ambudkar), with a fridge and coffee-table books — she meets reserved Nick (Stranger Things’ Dacre Montgomery, charming) who is transforming an old YMCA into a boutique shabby-chic hotel. To help herself heal, Lucy comes up with the idea of a shrine to love lost, where the broken-hearted can leave the mementoes of beloved exes, to be housed in Nick’s hotel. Of course, the exhibition becomes a huge success — cue the obligatory flurry of social media posts, a New York magazine cover — but Lucy’s happiness is challenged when the Grown-Up Boyfriend returns.
Geraldine Viswanathan gives a performance that pops, full of life, wit and energy.
Let’s be straight: The Broken Hearts Gallery doesn’t reinvent the romcom; it just does it very well. For those ticking off the tropes, there is a meet cute after a devastating break-up (a distraught Lucy gets into Nick’s car mistaking it for a Lyft taxi); a pair of supportive besties (Hamilton breakout Phillipa Soo’s Nadine as a gay heartbreaker and Molly Gordon’s Amanda as murder-obsessive Amanda are terrific fun — she also has the pre-requisite never-says-a-word-until-it’s-funny boyfriend); montages galore, comedy slapstick (Lucy gives a drunken acceptance speech to a posh crowd), secrets that look to derail the happy couple, a last-minute cross-town dash, and the final grand gesture that at least has the nerve to announce itself as a “grand gesture”.
But Krinsky elevates the material in three distinct areas. Firstly, she creates a tone that allows the film to be cynical and knowing without ever the polluting the air of romance. Secondly, the idea of a broken hearts gallery is a resonant one, creating a mood of poignancy and nostalgia, given depth when we find out the real reason Lucy started hoarding. But Krinsky’s greatest achievement here is in her casting. A scene-stealer from Blockers and Bad Education, Geraldine Viswanathan gives a performance that pops, full of life, wit and energy, but which still hits notes of longing and melancholy that give the character emotional heft. Her chemistry with Montgomery is tangible: there is something delightfully old-fashioned about the way they spar with each other, a courtship built on flirting and genuine will-they-won’t they tension. When was the last time a romcom did that?