LOVE THIS: “Language of a Broken Heart”

By Lisa Barr

Okay, so normally I don’t do shout-outs … but hey, life is about Exceptions. Last night, friends invited me and my hubby to see a movie premiere — Language of a Broken Heart — an award-winning Indie film that has crossed over to the mainstream (think Juno-esque). It has all the ingredients that I love in a Rom-Com: love lost, love found … and all the good stuff in-between. Only this time, instead of the girl pining over some idiot guy who dumped her — it’s the boy who suffers over a woman who treats him badly. Everyone looks at his break-up behavior as unmanly, “Grow Some …”  and his own mother calls him “special” (code for too sensitive and vulnerable).

Time to Man Up.

Like so many of us — during our relentless search for The One — we got caught in the Bad Relationship Web — sideswiped and blinded by what we think is love (but is really Settling-in-Drag) because of our own insecurities — believing we don’t deserve more or better.

As literary goddess Anaïs Nin says: We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Here’s the gist — Nick Brown, a neurotic best-selling author who writes about love, can’t keep girls from leaving him. Let me just say he is adorable, but way too sensitive, ironically a turnoff for women. After he comes back to his apartment in New York City to find his fiancé with another man (heartbreaking moment), he returns to his hometown (in Rockford, Illinois) and the only woman he ever left, his mother (LOVE HER, by the way). There, he renews his relationships with the people who matter the most, his family and friends. By a simple twist of fate he meets a free-spirited bookseller who challenges him to let people appreciate him for who he is … not who others want him to be.

This is a small low-budget movie, shot in 18 days — but the message is big. After the movie, we met the lead actor/writer Juddy Talt (and his Mom who could be his sister, who lives in Rockford). He was warm, huggable, and true to himself and to his writing. The kind of loyal guy with a Big Heart who you’d want your daughter to bring home.

This is an honest film. It makes you laugh, and makes you cheer him on (BREAK UP WITH THE BITCH ALREADY … STOP CALLING HER).

The Good News: The Language of a Broken Heart is a case in which the Good Guy Finishes Last … and then somehow comes out ahead.

LB:  The movie just opened in New York, is now playing in Chicago (Old Orchard, Lincolnshire Theaters), and is opening around the country… Check out the trailer: http://vimeo.com/user16950218/loabhtrailer