It's pretty safe to say I will never miss a film about New York artists, their lives and loves. So of course I paid to see "Breakable You." I enjoy seeing my city in a film, and I enjoy seeing stories about writers and therapists, as I am both. So on a superficial level, I enjoyed this film. At the same time there was a lot about it, mainly about the characters and their choices, that left me cold. Perhaps that was the writer's/director's intention? I don't know, but I prefer to watch people in films struggling with "Life Issues" and resolving them in ways I like and approve of than in ways I find selfish, dishonest and morally bankrupt. What this means about Breakable You is that yes, it held my interest, but in the end, left a bad taste in my mouth.
4 Reviews
Everyone is extremely softly conniving
mike-c-b25 July 2020
Basically this film sets records for a new level of soft passive-aggression. Nothing happens in the film. You don't want to follow anyone, because everyone is extremely softly conniving - against themselves or others. Inbetween scenes, everyone's emotions are completely shut down and stopped and they're in a twighlight/numb zone. Takes you completely out of the movie and the 4th wall is broken this way. A new scenes starts again and it's extremely soft conniving again.
In a film like this the only value is people being themselves. The story is the last thing that matters.
In a film like this the only value is people being themselves. The story is the last thing that matters.
Breakable You is unforgettable
Maryjnberry3 September 2019
Warning: Spoilers
There is more to this movie than meets the eye...as the title suggests the question is what does it take to break you? In this complex world and all of the obligations each of us takes on whether it be a play that doesn't belong to you-the head of the Weller's and taking your best friends hit play- with emotional depth that you could never have written because you're a narcissist--but you pretend that you wrote it only to be caught out by your ex-wife; or the fact that as the daughter of the Wellers, you're in a period of time of continual change, you're just finishing your thesis about morality, you broke up with one man and then take up with a man that's emotionally unattainable, (like your father) but no matter, you delve into that relationship, make him wake up, but then find out that not only he is an actor, (grew up with a father in the show business and the uncertainty that comes with that) but now you're having a girl baby that will be beset with any number of the same problems you lived through, so you're on the point of breaking; or the mother who is so angry with her ex-husband that she has an affair with his brother, the ex husband the narcissist has made a name for himself as play write but was marginally successful, you had to shoulder the financial load, angry that you were never emotionally satisfied in that relationship, but you had your work, your daughter, your own psychiatrist then you had to start all over at 58...
The Wellers are complex group especially in today's fast paced world when emotional health is often forgotten or left by the wayside, until it's impossible to continue without it.
Powerful mosaic
ReadingFilm16 April 2023
It is a bigger canvas with more characters than Starting Out in the Evening, which I believe to be a masterpiece, and this is adapted by the same novelist and director. The NYC relationship ensemble is a tradition in film, about upper class writers, publishers, intellectuals, their lives in shambles. They always have that sole articulate black intellectual.
The film is dated by about ten years when this genre was all the rage in indie film. It shows how the landscape has changed in independent film that it only has 200 views on letterboxd, with a cast like that (and the top reviews here straight up graffiti...)
Still, the movie is a magic trick. Once you get to know the characters, it plays you in interesting ways.
Shaloub is the writer this time, he is a toxic narcissist. Hunter, she becomes stranded by happiness and seems lost and one-dimensional. Milioti is obsessed with dating the least interesting man in the world and exists only to be his sex mommy. (I like how she is teaching a class and she looks no older than anyone there.) This is basically the worst group of people to focus a movie around, and maybe that says something about the randomness of existence.
Because there is all this movement, as the melodrama unfolds everything we assumed was wrong.
Milioti falls into post-partum depression that is as terrifying as her manic pixie was uplifting. Her boyfriend we expect will be haunted the whole film, ends up becoming sensible. Shaloub begins, almost monstrous, but you find a weird respect for him.
The movie sets up these characters and takes them on a journey, and therein is its pleasure.
What it lacks is Starting Out's myth-making, a film that makes the audience feel like geniuses because it is putting down so much psychic drama that reads perfectly to us. Maybe there is something to be said about that film's silence too, here every ugly thought is expressed, becoming an alienating experience.
In fact, this feels like how Starting Out in the Evening talked about author Langella's flops, clouded, less definite, more real to a fault.
Still there is a journey on screen that resonates, nothing stands still across the film. Then its ending.
1- The theater director's fake play wins acclaim.
2- His wife knows because she knows.
3- His intent is to step into the spotlight because art exists beyond its author.
His gobbledy guck logic becomes redemptive. This to me is a spiritual point about how there is no distinction between the swimmer, and the current. It's not real? Well when was theater and storytelling ever real to begin with?
This has an impact of breaking the fourth wall to invite us into its celebration as the audience, of art, melodrama, and our own flawed lives. Like I said, it is a magic trick. I hope they make a third.
The film is dated by about ten years when this genre was all the rage in indie film. It shows how the landscape has changed in independent film that it only has 200 views on letterboxd, with a cast like that (and the top reviews here straight up graffiti...)
Still, the movie is a magic trick. Once you get to know the characters, it plays you in interesting ways.
Shaloub is the writer this time, he is a toxic narcissist. Hunter, she becomes stranded by happiness and seems lost and one-dimensional. Milioti is obsessed with dating the least interesting man in the world and exists only to be his sex mommy. (I like how she is teaching a class and she looks no older than anyone there.) This is basically the worst group of people to focus a movie around, and maybe that says something about the randomness of existence.
Because there is all this movement, as the melodrama unfolds everything we assumed was wrong.
Milioti falls into post-partum depression that is as terrifying as her manic pixie was uplifting. Her boyfriend we expect will be haunted the whole film, ends up becoming sensible. Shaloub begins, almost monstrous, but you find a weird respect for him.
The movie sets up these characters and takes them on a journey, and therein is its pleasure.
What it lacks is Starting Out's myth-making, a film that makes the audience feel like geniuses because it is putting down so much psychic drama that reads perfectly to us. Maybe there is something to be said about that film's silence too, here every ugly thought is expressed, becoming an alienating experience.
In fact, this feels like how Starting Out in the Evening talked about author Langella's flops, clouded, less definite, more real to a fault.
Still there is a journey on screen that resonates, nothing stands still across the film. Then its ending.
1- The theater director's fake play wins acclaim.
2- His wife knows because she knows.
3- His intent is to step into the spotlight because art exists beyond its author.
His gobbledy guck logic becomes redemptive. This to me is a spiritual point about how there is no distinction between the swimmer, and the current. It's not real? Well when was theater and storytelling ever real to begin with?
This has an impact of breaking the fourth wall to invite us into its celebration as the audience, of art, melodrama, and our own flawed lives. Like I said, it is a magic trick. I hope they make a third.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
