The Heartbreak Agency (now on Netflix) is a German rom-com with a little bit of -dram in it – and that might save it from the scrap heap. Rosalie Thomass stars as the owner of the thing in the title, which offers counseling for people despondent from a breakup, and Laurence Rupp plays a sexist cad of a magazine columnist who writes about her business. These two characters are so desperately different, there’s no way they could ever, ever, ever fall in love. Ever! So why bother to watch this movie at all, really, since it’s so obviously about opposites who don’t attract? Especially since it was released on Valentine’s Day? Well, there may be a halfway-decent reason, he begrudgingly admitted.
The Gist: “I’m just there for them.” That’s Maria’s (Thomass) goal. She runs The Heartbreak Agency, which offers “seminars, coaching and therapy” for lovelorn individuals. She calls herself a “heartbreak therapist,” which sounds a little snake-oily, but also might just be a subgenre of the psychotherapy business. Karl (Rupp), however, doesn’t buy it. He believes she’s “creating emotional needs, which she then fixes.” Of course, he doesn’t believe in love. Never has, never will. He sleeps with women, discards them like gum wrappers and struts around with the type of smug look on his face that you just want to douse with bleach and ammonia and erase from this existence. This guy. Whatta ass.
Karl is a writer for Splash magazine, which still prints physical copies, so yes, that’s your first indication that this movie is set in a fantasy land. He walks into the Heartbreak Agency with a chip on his shoulder, interviews Maria, then sits at his keyboard and hammers out a nasty, sexist, laying-it-on-mighty-thick hit piece in which he calls women “wussesses” – because women can be wusses too, he implores – and degrades them for being obsessed with pronouns. He sneaks it past his editor, who one assumes was comatose for a while, or vacationing at McMurdo Station, and then gets fired. Good riddance. And then Karl retires from journalism and lives a long miserable life alone, the end. What a movie, eh?
No! Actually, The Heartbreak Agency is one of those movies in which total peeholes like Karl either get a righteous comeuppance, or they miraculously transform into decent human beings, and I’m not gonna say which. No sir. But I will say that he can’t get any work, and is given a second chance by his editor, and I almost typo’d “editor” as “idiot,” so my subconscious judgment is bubbling up a bit here. Anyway, Karl has to undergo the full-monty Heartbreak Agency treatment and write a fair, reasonable piece about it, and then the idioeditor will give him his job back. This requires Karl to meet a bunch of lonely, depressed people and sit it on group therapy sessions, and maybe, just maybe, injecting a little zazz into this sad, mopey scenario, and possibly, just possibly, getting to know Maria as more than just someone who’s selling unrealistic romantic notions to vulnerable rubes. Easy! Or easier said than done?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: So many rom-com tropes here. So, so many. It sometimes feels like a slight inversion of a premise we saw in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days – a premise that was more plausible in 2003, back when being a magazine columnist was something a person could make a living doing.
Performance Worth Watching: Without Thomass’ grounded, down-to-earth characterization, The Heartbreak Agency would be far closer to blending in with every other generic rom-com in your Netflix menu.
Memorable Dialogue: Karl makes a salient meta-point: “All of those romantic comedies are to blame, with their big romantic gestures that make people swoon.”
Sex and Skin: A little pre- and post-coital snuggling, but nothing that sends the blood rushing to the extremities.
Our Take: You know what would be so incredibly ironic? If Karl and Maria, opposites in every conceivable way, fell in love. How MAD would that be? HOWLINGLY mad, I say. But! Even if that does happen – and I’m not saying it does, even though you can predict the outcome of this one pretty easily – The Heartbreak Agency doesn’t quite succumb to the “big romantic gestures that make people swoon.” It’s almost as if director Shirel Peleg, along with Thomass and, eventually, Rupp, actively rebel against the screenplay’s boilerplate rom-com fodder, turning a hackneyed premise into something that almost seems plausible. Peleg downplays the wackier elements of the plot, and emphasizes the sweet, tender moments that our two leads share. The execution of the script ever-so-slightly eclipses the annoying contrivances.
So you can feel sort of good about not disliking this movie. I know, faint praise. But the film lacks the overt effort of many others of its ilk, which try so very hard to make us laugh (I watched one of those just the other day, a Polish dud dubbed Kill Me If You Dare). Although Heartbreak Agency has its goofy bits, Peleg leans into the lightly dramatic fodder just enough to make us believe the human emotion on display is rooted in truth – especially the emotions Thomass conjures with naturalistic ease. You might not buy Karl’s 180-degree personality switch, which makes a John Kerry flip-flop look like a slight twitch.
Tonally, Peleg somehow makes all this work, especially as Karl and Maria find some common ground in the middle of their ideological battle. Each has a viable point: She’s kind and thoughtful, but her uptight demeanor creates a dour atmosphere for her lovesick patients. And he’s crass, but correctly surmises that her patients could stand to loosen up a little and find happiness in simple things, like having a few drinks around a bonfire. The film isn’t bold enough to get into thornier issues about Karl’s toxic masculinity, or how Maria walks the line between helping people and turning their suffering into profit. Is Maria’s agency a medical institution or just pseudoscientific “wellness” squishiness? Who knows, and The Heartbreak Agency isn’t interested in that question, but at least it doesn’t make us sick by feeding us too many saccharine rom-com overtures.
Our Call: The Heartbreak Agency doesn’t reinvent the rom-com wheel, not in the least. But it’s just barely good enough to transcend a trope or two, and that’s enough for me to gently (but not passionately, let’s be realistic here) encourage you to STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.