Their relationship is unique in that Christina becomes both a lover and a mother to Nick, who lives only with his father. In contrast, Nick becomes both a teacher and a lover to Christina, while two controlling, sexist males, Christina's father and her fiance, act as fathers to her. The couple is placed in a precarious situation in which conformists, such as Christina's parents and the school staff, look at her with disgust. The students, similarly, act as voyeurs, prying out Nick's every gesture. This sensation of looking is enhanced through the employment of well-trained extras and clever production design. In Christina's girlfriend's flat, the place of the couple's first love making session, for example, a selection of masks line the walls like some perverse audience whose sole purpose is to judge the couple. Yet, each having abolished their guilt, Christina and Nick defy their onlookers with carpe-diem-esque confidence.
In order to reinforce the film's romantic core, Jenkins, an experienced television director, employed a number of techniques that emphasised the powerful, heart-wrenching performances above filmic form. In both the pre-production and production stages of The Heartbreak Kid, Jenkins, keen to escape the theatrical feel of the drama, encouraged a great deal of improvisation on behalf of the actors and the director of photography. This resulted in a very naturalistic, social-realist mise-en-scene in which multi-camera set ups and the usage of hand-held camera operation capture a certain immediacy and vitality of performance that may have been expended in place of precision of form if single, static cameras were employed throughout.
This style contrasts with moments of slick, stylised direction; most notable in Nick's night-time training sequence. Similarly, the film's soundtrack consists of a seemingly haphazard blend of popular music and a traditional composition. When viewed in context, this apparent ad-hoc mixture of styles reflects the film's dominant theme - that being the pursuit of independence and personal freedom.
