Blue (Peter Coyote), a pop artist, and Eli (Nick Mancuso), a garment business executive, have been best friends since childhood. Both are single, physically fit, and extremely competitive. Neither relates well to women. Blue's girlfriend Cyd (Kathryn Harrold) has just moved out after a five-year relationship. Tired of playing second fiddle to his art and living in squalor, she takes up residence with a more successful artist. Eli jumps from one woman to the next until he meets Liliane (Carole Laure), an art gallery assistant whom he believes to be the woman of his dreams.
Heartbreakers is a very topical film set in Los Angeles where sex is casual, money talks, and "attitude" counts for everything. The long friendship between the protagonists is tested when Blue finally achieves financial success as a painter and makes love to Liliane on the eve of his exhibition opening.
Writer and director Bobby Roth has made Heartbreakers into a provocative comedy of manners. On one level, the story is a study of male friendship and the obstacles to deep and true camaraderie. It is also a colorful portrait of two individuals exhibiting what Dr. Dan Kiley calls the Peter Pan Syndrome — caught in the abyss between the men they don't want to become and the boys they can no longer be.
