Set in the capital of Peru, How to Deal with a Heartbreak is a follow-up to the mildly successful romantic comedy How to Get Over a Breakup. The titles are pretty self-explanatory, but where the first film is strictly about romance, the sequel experiments with more tender themes like family and friendship. It features everyday characters meant to seem relatable and endearing, but halfway through watching, one can’t help but wonder why any of this matters. The stakes are so low and the premise so ordinary, it feels like a huge effort to simply care about the movie. Some rom-coms are saved by a funny script or a charming cast, but this has none of that. The most rousing part of the film is when one character (I won’t divulge who) dies, and so Maria Fe is forced to grapple with the heaviness of death. It’s the one moment in the movie that feels real, but sadly it’s tossed aside to make way for more generic fare.
María Fe, still single but not so sought after, faces the existential crisis and the blank page as any mature and sensible woman would: by getting involved with the wrong guy.
When writer-turned-influencer Maria Fe loses someone dear to her, she’s pushed even further down her existential crisis and turns to love, friendship, and the world wide web for answers.
I’m not sure anything about this film stands out. It looks like one of a hundred rom-coms Netflix puts out each year, down to the vibrantly colored set and social media editing. It feels like a massive waste to set your story at the heart of Peru and churn out something that looks like it could’ve been made anywhere. There are no cultural specificities and no strong identity, just another film about a young woman figuring things out.
Is anyone else creeped out by how identical all these Netflix romcoms from around the world are starting to become?
