I’ve seen five films in three days at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and every single one is, at least partially, about the break-up of a romantic relationship. Three of these films are in the Narrative Competition: Harmony & Me, Hollywood, je t’aime, and Wah Do Dem. It would be an interesting exercise to try to make the argument that this trend is a sign of the times, that (of course!) filmmakers are using the universal touchstone of romantic trauma as a key to understanding a wider world torn asunder. But break-up movies tend to resist obvious real-world relevance. These three films all exist in vague fantasy worlds where the defining difficulties of life in our contemporary world don’t exist, where our heroes — all of them men, two out of three pining over lost women and one haunted by an ex-boyfriend — are essentially unaware that anything exists but their own heartbreak, until that outside world barges in and demands their attention. This is as it should be — this is how break-up films work — but it does seem notable that a film festival would devote nearly half of their narrative competition to movies about white men moping. Hey, maybe this *is* realism! Let’s investigate.

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