‘BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY’ REVIEW: A WINNING COMEDY WITH A QUIRKY, SENTIMENTAL CENTER

Source: Chicago Tribune If Geraldine Viswanathan’s bubbly spirit could be bottled and distributed, the world would be a much brighter and funnier place. A breakout in the 2018 high school comedy “Blockers,” Viswanathan’s radioactive charm and charisma powers the winning romantic comedy “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” the debut of writer/director Natalie Krinsky. With pluck and wit in spades, Viswanathan’s character, Lucy, is a classic rom-com heroine whom audiences will instantly fall for. She’s a kooky, quirky art gallery assistant in New York City with a penchant for sentimental souvenirs that borders on hoarding, the kind of leading lady with whom one can identify, or fall in love, and in the best case scenario, a little bit of both. It’s Lucy’s open heart, often broken, that is the fulcrum of Krinsky’s film. After an embarrassing work incident and subsequent breakup with her suave superior, Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar), at the tony Woolf Gallery, Lucy descends into a depression surrounded by all her stuff: old tchotchkes and trash that remind her of her many, many broken hearts, mementos of the past that ensure all of these old loves were real, at one point. Her roommates Nadine (Phillipa Soo, outfitted in gloriously Sapphic ’70s duds) and Amanda (Molly Gordon, delightfully sociopathic) demand Lucy get rid of it all, but where to put it?