Summary
How to Get Over a Breakup is flat-pack filmmaking at its finest: Take a functional script, a relatable idea and a joke or two, and away you go.
Now that Netflix is so intimately tied to the very idea of relationships, it only makes sense that the streaming giant should cater to those who are getting over them, too. Enter How to Get Over a Breakup, the rather obviously-titled Peruvian comedy from Bruno Ascenzo and Joanna Lombardi.
Aimed unashamedly at the kind of low-maintenance crowd who just want to lose themselves in something uplifting, the film puts a faintly slapstick spin on a universal premise. It’s decently-acted, for the most part, and gives a formulaic but functional script by María José Osorio the right amount of energy and enthusiasm. It doesn’t contain any secrets or particular insight, but its essential truth about breakups is one that is always worth repeating. How do you get over a breakup? Well, you just do.
The plot concerns Maria Fe (Gisela Ponce de León), a copywriter who finds herself suddenly dumped and her life derailed. As most of us know, you don’t really recognise how much of your life is devoted to someone else until that person disappears and you suddenly have nobody to clean up after. What to do with all that free time? How to stave off those feelings of depression and anxiety and inadequacy and self-loathing? Well, you start a blog, apparently.
I can vouch for the fact that writing things on the internet is an excellent way to connect with people who are even crazier than the one you’re trying to forget. It also helps to have friends who give you advice that lands you in conveniently comical situations.
How to Get Over a Breakup, then, is nothing new. It’s beholden to the confines of genre and takes the path of least resistance in response to a question you already knew the answer to. It won’t change your life or radically alter your perspective, but it might remind you that the best way to handle anything in life is simply one day at a time.
