Indy Film Fest: All the Reasons to Forget

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You should write a book about that, the friend says over drinks.

What? Breaking up with my girlfriend? It’d be so boring that nobody would want to read it.

Instead of a book, filmmaker Pedro Coutinho made this movie about the devastation and mirth of breaking up. And it’s not boring, not for even a minute.

“All the Reasons to Forget” follows the path of Antonio (a charming Johnny Massaro) in the months after being dumped by Sofia (winsome Bianco Camparato). A mid-20s, vaguely hipster (or whatever the Brazilian equivalent is) dude with a mop of curly hair, manboy chin scruff and emotive eyes, Antonio spends the entire movie oscillating between despair, remorse, self-absorption and anger.

He’s somehow reached this age without ever really learning to talk to women, even the one he’s been intimate with for the past two years. He has a tendency to start meaningful conversations, then freeze into a miasma of indecision and stammered silence. He’s not a bad guy, but he drives people crazy.

He seeks solace in the companionship of his similarly dude-ish best friend, Gabriel (Victor Mendes); his cousin, Carla (Maria Laura Nogueria), slightly older but not much wiser, who’s struggling with their own marriage to Felipe (Rafael Primot); Elisa, an older psychotherapist (Regina Braga) who’s overly interested in the importance of her patients’ sex lives; and, eventually, a parade of other women with whom he goes on disastrous dates.

Antonio goes on antidepressants for a while, which have some terrible (but humorous) side effects. Formerly a layabout at his job as a designer, he suddenly becomes the guy burning the midnight oil.

“All the Reasons to Forget” lies firmly within the romantic comedy genre, but it’s also got some sharp observations about the modern dating scene in Brazil, which isn’t terribly different from what you’d see in a big American city. It’s funny, well-acted and has a bracing truth.