A woman finds her first love to retrieve her 'heart' before her wedding day. | Eat Your Heart Out

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Eat Your Heart Out is used with permission from Abby Pierce. Learn more at https://omele.to/3n0ebJs.

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In a world where people literally rip their hearts out and give them away to their loved ones, Wallace wakes one morning with a bloody chest. Years ago, she traded hearts with her former sweetheart Douglas. But now she’s going to be married to another man, and she decides it’s time to trade hearts back.

She finds Douglas, only to discover that after their breakup, he cut her heart up in pieces, leaving each piece in their favorite shared places that harken back to happier memories. Together Wallace and Douglas go on a kind of treasure hunt through the city, retrieving Wallace’s heart and reliving their old relationship.

Directed by lead actor Abby Pierce from a script co-written with Julia Lederer, this short romance film is an elegantly witty, incisive exploration of love, emotional generosity and how feelings can change and transform but perhaps never go away. Its literalizes the metaphor of the heart as the center of love, creating a magical realist tale where people walk around with bloodied chests, exchange hearts with lovers and are custodians to their beloved’s important organ during the relationship.

Bringing the metaphor to life offers opportunities for flourishes of whimsy and sometimes dark humor, but the writing and direction excel in balancing a compelling mixture of tones. There’s the quirkiness inherent in watching the premise play out in the larger world, but the core of Wallace and Douglas’s story is more melancholic, as ex-lovers reckoning with what they mean to one another. A stentorian voiceover — done by actor Graham Beckel — relays facts related to the heart, adding an arch feel of a nature documentary to the storytelling textures of the film. Visually, too, the mix of saturated, slightly moody naturalism with almost stately, formal framing adds to the sense of distance between two people who once loved and knew each other well.

The heart of the film, though, is Wallace and Douglas’s journey as they retrieve the pieces of Wallace’s heart that Douglas was entrusted with. They visit old haunts, relive memories of their first kiss and end up in a church for a final heart-to-heart. In a way, they’re truly saying goodbye to one another, as Wallace moves on to a new chapter in her romantic life. As an actor, Pierce plays Wallace’s impatience in dealing with Douglas’s seemingly careless custody of her heart, and how she just wants to move on with the exchange. But she softens as she revisits her relationship with Douglas, played by actor Charley Koontz with gentle, awkward humor and sensitivity. He hints at his regret, but what also comes through is how he misses Wallace, though the writing is too skilled and precise to indulge in melodrama.

Instead, the former lovers come to an equilibrium and understanding, in a funny, moving final scene that transforms the offbeat nature of the metaphor into something indelible and graceful. “Eat Your Heart Out” recognizes the imperfect emotional journeys of love, and the wear and tear that finding love can have on us. We can have our hearts ripped out, or they can be bruised and damaged when handled improperly. But it also honors the way that love endures and lives in one another, even if it must change as people evolve, grow and move forward.

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A woman finds her first love to retrieve her ‘heart’ before her wedding day. | Eat Your Heart Out
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