Throwback: The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May), 1972

Lila Kolodny has a lousy singing voice. She also has an affinity for egg salad sandwiches and double-chocolate milkshakes. “You’ll have to get used to these things for the next forty or fifty years,” she tells her new husband, Lenny Cantrow, en route to their Miami honeymoon. His discomfort with this thought weighs visibly heavy as bits of egg salad adhere to her lips over breakfast. She senses this shift in mood and asks why he is being so quiet. To her, something must be wrong. “I’m always quiet in the morning. Something you’ll have to get used to,” he responds with unease and playing off her marital commitment.

Lenny is in his mid-thirties and lacks direction in life. His decision to marry Lila, at least a decade his junior, was an impulsive Band-Aid for an overarching anxiety about his accomplishments and the stark reality that he’ll likely soon have lived more years than he has left. And for what it’s worth, Lila fit the bill in embodying much of what he lacks: a comical confidence, well-versed in her own identity, and unapologetic for the very quirks that begin to unsettle Lenny. Further, she is young, objectively beautiful, and from a similar Jewish background. These qualities that make Lila a fit wife on paper matter little for Lenny once it becomes part of his own reality.

By the time Lila and Lenny finish their road trip from New York City to Miami, officially beginning their honeymoon vacation, he is already sick of her and latches onto the first beautiful, blue-eyed blonde he comes across. “You’re sitting in my spot,” the young WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant for those not in the ‘know’) casts a shadow on his pale, hairy body. She is beautiful, the sun glowing around her flat golden strands, wide jaw, and button nose. Her name is Kelly Corcoran, a spoiled and shallow university student from Minnesota who is on vacation with her upper class parents. In this brief moment, Lenny has already abandoned his wife of three days for the very young gentile girl of his dreams standing before him.

As Lila unfortunately suffers severe sunburn after attempting to acquire an even tan that day, Lenny chastises her for ruining their honeymoon and keeps her confined to their dark hotel room to ensure she heals. He doesn’t let her own misfortune ruin his vacation, as now he has the opportunity to approach Kelly as a seemingly single man. Lenny keeps his wife waiting in their hotel room, watching television, and creates absurd alibi’s for his day-long absences as he goes to comedy shows, boat outings, and dines with the Corcoran family. Mr. Corcoran has an immediate and growing distaste for Lenny which, while correct intuition, likely adheres to Lenny being an older Jewish man with an unremarkable career in sporting goods rather than an impulsive, unfaithful liar.

Of the Jewish faith versus gentile is an important theme to The Heartbreak Kid and has heavily been covered in retrospective reviews. Director Elaine May, writer Neil Simon, and actors Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin are Jewish and bring authenticity and personal experience to the film. Simon was hesitant to cast Berlin in the role of Lila, thinking she lacked marriageable beauty, and wanted Diane Keaton (a relative unknown at the time). May and Grodin felt that the distinction between Jewish Lila and gentile Kelly would not be strong enough with Keaton in the role. They were right. While the character of Lila has been criticized for perhaps being a negative Jewish stereotype, or just plain stupid, I’m not sure either are fair characterizations. As expressed earlier, Lila is firmly grounded in who she is and what she wants. Sure, she is not as sophisticated as the knock-out blonde, but she is terrifically in love with her new husband and went into their union with far more clarity and understanding than he. In fact, the love Lila has, verbal and nonverbal adoration, is lost on Lenny and likely a love he will never again encounter. Jeannie Berlin earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her careful crafting of Lila, who could have ended up as the accused soulless stereotype in less capable hands. I have to imagine her final scene, eleven minutes of comedy and heartbreak, solidified the well-earned and too-often overlooked nomination.

Ultimately, Lenny chases the unfamiliar and what he once imagined to be unattainable: a beautiful, Midwestern WASP from a family of good economic standing. In unfamiliar territory though, he finds an isolation he never experienced with Lila. His first wedding was intimate, full of life, and his new wife fully invested in him. In contrast, his second wedding lacks the energy, joy, and love. Lenny appears to be more akin to a second-cousin reluctantly invited to the wedding rather than the second-half of the main event. The religious traditions are foreign, Kelly ignores him, as do her parents, and their guests grow tired of his rehearsed discussions by the reception. Lenny sits on a couch, alone and on the outskirts of the party, as the room chatters around him. One can only deduce his standing as an outsider will follow him for the duration of this new marriage, however long it may last.

Rating: 8/10