Chemical Hearts
Directed by: Richard Tanne
Written by: Richard Tanne - Based on the novel "Our Chemical Hearts" by Krystal Sutherland
Starring: Austin Adams, Lili Reinhart, Kara Young, Coral Peña, C.J. Hoff, Sarah Jones, Bruce Altman, Meg Gibson
Drama/Romance - 93 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Aug 2020
Written by: Richard Tanne - Based on the novel "Our Chemical Hearts" by Krystal Sutherland
Starring: Austin Adams, Lili Reinhart, Kara Young, Coral Peña, C.J. Hoff, Sarah Jones, Bruce Altman, Meg Gibson
Drama/Romance - 93 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Aug 2020
Only in our imaginations and certain entertainment pieces do high schoolers talk this way. Remember when Ellen Page as Juno made everyone jealous with her quick wit? There were the kids from Dawson’s Creek, aka rural North Carolina, whose chatter was more pretentious than a Greenwich Village coffee shop. The Chemical Hearts duo carry on the tradition. These two are deep. She has secrets - new girl in school, walks with a cane, doesn’t want to be Editor-in-Chief of the school paper, and highlights passages in Pablo Neruda paperbacks. He breaks vases and then glues them back together to alternative indie rock from 10-15 years ago. Deep yo.
These 17 year-olds are self-proclaimed writers. They don’t do small talk. Yet, the result is not eye-rolling self-indulgence on the part of the filmmakers - we like these kids. Henry Page (Austin Adams, Gangster Squad) is dying for something to happen to him. He has the chops to pen formidable essays at will, but he has nothing to write about. This lonely heart needs a girl to shatter his heart into a million pieces. Grace Town (Lili Reinhart, Hustlers) is adept at externalizing that, “You’d better leave me the fuck alone,” vibe in the school hallways, but earnest Henry is so gosh darn disarming, her armor of dirty looks doesn’t stand a chance.
These 17 year-olds are self-proclaimed writers. They don’t do small talk. Yet, the result is not eye-rolling self-indulgence on the part of the filmmakers - we like these kids. Henry Page (Austin Adams, Gangster Squad) is dying for something to happen to him. He has the chops to pen formidable essays at will, but he has nothing to write about. This lonely heart needs a girl to shatter his heart into a million pieces. Grace Town (Lili Reinhart, Hustlers) is adept at externalizing that, “You’d better leave me the fuck alone,” vibe in the school hallways, but earnest Henry is so gosh darn disarming, her armor of dirty looks doesn’t stand a chance.
Reinhart loved the the YA novel, Our Chemical Hearts, by Krystal Sutherland, so much, she went out and found a director, had him adapt it into a screenplay, and then they optioned it. A bit out of order, but when passion is at hand, best hop to it. Writer and director Richard Tanne, who made his name hypothesizing Barack and Michelle’s first date in Southside With You, saw himself in Henry Page. Since every single one of us was a miserable teenager at some point with real or imagined unrequited love, we will all see shades of ourselves in Henry. Other than the whole vase hobby, he’s as relatable a protagonist as you can get. He’s not the quarterback, isn’t a mathlete, and seems to live in his head.
Tanne’s intent for the film seems to want to show the idea of teenage limbo. The teenaged brain is in transition. Perhaps Britney Spears said it best, “I’m not a girl…not yet a woman.” It’s chaos in there beneath the hormones and know-it-all moods. Check out this juicy bit of dialogue I can only guess is lifted from the source material, “Adults are just scarred kids who were lucky enough to make it out of limbo.” That’s wicked deep right there. It’s right up there with yearning for Henry to fix Grace as he would one of his vases. In a more common film, he would. There would be tears and shouting, but in the end, she would thank him and he would thank Neruda.
Well, Chemical Hearts isn’t your mid-‘90s cliche. Henry and Grace have dimensions to their characters. These kids are so beyond their years; however, that the whole enterprise seeps past the red line on the believability scale and ends up being a vision of how we would like high school and the idea of first loves to be, and not how they really are. Reinhart was right to love the character of Grace so much that she went out to get this film made, inserting herself as an executive producer. Grace is as fascinating as Henry is angsty. Tanne succeeds in creating characters to care about and even makes us wish we were more like them in high school. But then we remember who we really were and we will all move on thanking our lucky stars we are no longer such tortured adolescents.
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