THE STORY – How do you get over a broken heart? This is the question that leads two lovelorn souls to attend a “breakfast for the brokenhearted” that results in them becoming inexplicably entangled with one another.
THE CAST – Suzy, Lee Jin-wook, Yoo Ji-tae & Keum Sae-rok
THE TEAM – Sun-ae Lim (Director/Co-Writer) & Yi-an Jung (Co-Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 108 Minutes
It feels like film is a medium that can be so inherently romantic, a quality many films, even in the romance genre don’t always utilize. Filmmakers like Wong Kar-wai, Céline Sciamma, and Terrence Malick know how to use composition and music to excel the yearning and passion of their film’s connections. Even the small and futile moments feel massive and meaningful. While not every film can hit the heights of those masters of the medium and genre, it’s always refreshing to watch a romance film that feels romantic and makes you swoon as much, if not more, than the characters do for one another. Lim Sun-ae’s creates such a sensory film with her third feature, “Seven O’Clock Breakfast Club for the Brokenhearted,” one of the clear standouts of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
The film follows two recently heartbroken characters, Sa-gang (Suzy), a flight attendant on the other side of an affair with a married man, and Ji-hoon (Lee Jin-wook), who recently exited a long term relationship. The two are looking for any way to move on and heal from their troubled wounds, and in their search, are invited to the titular “breakfast club.” The club serves as a therapy of sorts, where the invitees can eat, vent to one another, and watch romance films. The most important aspect of the club to the story is the expectation that attendees bring a trinket or object from their recently ended relationship to trade with someone else. When Ji-hoon leaves behind a camera from his recent relationship, he later regrets this and searches for the member from the club who took it, that member being Sa-gang. This quest for retrieval brings the two together, and even before they meet, the breakfast club, along with the items they’ve both taken, cause them to readdress their feelings, grief, and heartbreak.
The first great quality of the film is this concept, which just really works on a base level. Everyone has been heartbroken and wanted somewhere to go to unload everything and find community, and it certainly taps into that relatable quality. Bringing a romance into this world only makes sense as the next logical step, and the way things unravel feels very natural and intriguing. It’s a really strong script and the connection the two characters ultimately feel works from the moment they meet. The two performers do a great job at capturing the loneliness and also the solace from finding connections, not just to each other but the overall club. Whether you want to trace the film through the five stages of grief or a messier path to closure, the arcs of both characters feel very earned and sweet by the film’s end.
Lim Sun-ae creates a rich texture for the film; there’s almost a dreamlike, hazy quality to how it looks, which pairs strangely well with some snappy yet effective editing choices. The film has a methodical pace; it takes a while for the characters to meet, but it doesn’t feel like a drag before that. The two parallel intrigue points of this romance and the breakfast club tie into each other quite well. If anything, the build-up to when they meet is more exciting and enveloping than when they finally end up meeting. Not that the film afterwards is underwhelming, but the spark doesn’t explode in a way that makes the film a slam dunk. By the end, it’s very sweet, and there’s a catharsis to it that’s very satisfying, but the meeting onwards doesn’t have the same magnetic, romantic quality of something like “Before Sunrise” or “Columbus,” which it’s clearly hoping to capture.
The music is a major issue in keeping the film from reaching its full potential as a romance. The score is nice at certain points, but overbearing in some key moments, which really detracts from the overall emotions. On that issue, there are some moments that generally feel a little too hokey and sentimental, which really halts the momentum. Not that those cheesier moments aren’t charming in a vacuum, but in comparison to the more patient, natural-leaning energy of most of the film, these moments fall flat. It feels like there are two filmmakers at work at some points, even if both sides of the film are strong individually. It ends up as maybe seventy-five percent a quiet, yearning indie film and twenty-five percent a more traditional studio romance. The two paired together results in a film that feels a tad uneven, which is perhaps why the romance isn’t as satisfying in its final moments. The tone of the ending is somewhere in-between, but with a few scenes tinkered throughout, something really special could’ve been made here.
