Un corazón roto no es como un jarrón roto o un florero
2016 · 11m · España
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Genres: comedy, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
How will an expert cardiologist mend her broken heart after a sentimental failure? She knows the symptoms: first the pain in the sternum, then the obsession that settles in the brain, replaying the last dates. Perhaps the energy manager who works at her hospital may be able to revive her broken heart.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Coixet takes the broken-heart metaphor and just... commits to it literally, which should be unbearable but somehow works—the conceit refuses to wink at you, and that sincerity is its own kind of subversion.
A deceptively elegant piece of formal storytelling: the film literalizes its central conceit with the precision of a metaphysical poet, and Coixet's control over tone—balancing whimsy with genuine tenderness—places it squarely in the lineage of European romantic comedy as intellectual exercise.
The entire film hinges on a single decision to treat medical terminology and romantic language as interchangeable registers, and when a cardiologist speaks of her heart condition while meaning her heartbreak, that collapse of language becomes the entire emotional architecture.