If you want to watch at torrid, florid, overwrought romance where the guy rends his shirt to expose his passion, crying and scowling and sneering at his one true love, then maybe The Tearsmith is the earnest, overly-serious red-blooded Harlequin romance for you. Anyone else will probably just roll their eyes, sneer, cringe, and guffaw at the overwrought, overly serious furrowed-brow of it all.

The Tearsmith is an Italian Netflix film about a pair of teenage orphans adopted out of their sadistic orphanage. Little do the new parents know, the boy and girl are in hate with each other. The soul-crushing, sneering kind of hate a bad boy gives a swooning girl who loves him despite his disdain… and can FIX him… assuming her bodice doesn’t rip open and spill her heart’s blood from her chest.

Its all very serious, very over-the-top, very sneering, very scowling, very Read-Too-Much-Heathcliff-On-The-Moors. It’s also terribly written with some wildly cringy dialog and even worse plotting. But I doubt anyone who would love this film would have come for the art. No, they want to feel ALL the emotions, stare in scandalized fervor at bared chests, lips seductively rippling across a bodice, and lustful passions barely moral.

Did I enjoy this movie? A part of me kind of did but mainly just for how serious it took itself. It has no sense of humor. It is exactly that movie… a film so eyebrow-furrowingly serious about its young love story that I kind of had to admire how little it cares for your half-star sneering reviews. It’s not good, but your inner 14 year old, addled and weighed-down by the promises and lies of scorched earth romance may not care.

If you are the kind of person who loves a dark, brooding artist that only a waifish girl can fix, this is exactly your overcooked potpoiling Harlequin romance. I didn’t “like” it but I half respect it and wasn’t bored by it… even though the dialog is terrible and the story beats pretty corny. Objectively speaking.

Score: 71