Sometimes wallowing is all we can do. When breakups happen, one of the only antidotes is to immerse oneself in content to remind us we are not alone. Songs about heartbreak, books about great loves, films that make us feel seen all provide us with the soothing knowledge that we aren't the only people in the world who have been broken up with. The Broken Hearts Gallery is one to add to the list of mid-breakup watches.
Starring Geraldine Viswanathan as protagonist and heart-break-ee Lucy, an art gallery assistant living in New York City who, after getting brutally dumped and wallowing in her bedroom for three weeks with memorabilia from her exes, creates a pop-up installation dedicated to heartbreak. On chance - and by chance, I mean getting into a stranger's Prius after mistaking it for an Uber (happens to the best of us) - Lucy meets Nick (played by Dacre Montgomery of Stranger Things) an emotionally stunted Australian who is pursuing his dream of opening a boutique hotel, and potential new flame/business partner.
The film was executive produced by Selena Gomez herself and is in cinemas as of last Friday, 11th September.
When women of colour seldom get championed as the heroine of rom com's, Viswanathan told the LA Times what the opportunity meant to her. “Everyone dreams of being the lead in a rom-com, right? It’s a genre that I never really thought that I would be the lead of,” she explains. “I had accepted my fate as the ‘best friend.’ I mean, I love those ’90s rom-com movies but [the stars] are all stunningly beautiful, model-like blond women. It was always, ‘OK, those are the girls we see in romantic comedies.’"
Co-star Montgomery on the other hand, was waiting patiently for a role on the more sentimental side of the screen, telling the LA Times “I’m a bit of a romantic,” he says. “I’m quite sensitive as well, and given that, oftentimes my relationships are quite intense. I love to love, and being a sentimentalist myself, I like this idea of objects having meaning in people’s lives.”
Heartbroken, single, or happily partnered, The Broken Hearts Gallery is a wholesome, heartwarming rom-com to bring back all the feels. Watch the trailer, below.
