Chemical Hearts: Partial combustion

Chemical Hearts (2020) • View trailer 

3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexuality and teen drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.21.20

There’s never been any shortage of stories focused on the bittersweet angst, hopes and heartbreak of young people in love; as one character in this film observes, we can go all the way back to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

 

Henry (Austin Abrams) doesn't understand why Grace (Lili Reinhart) has joined the staff
of the student newspaper; she refuses to write or participate in story-pitching sessions,
preferring to solely edit the work of others.

The premise is universal, and everybody responds to it: a painfully familiar scenario that stretches back centuries.

 

Amazing, then, that today’s writers continue to find (reasonably) fresh ways to explore the same well-trod territory.

 

Australian author Krystal Sutherland made a significant splash with her debut novel, 2016’s Our Chemical Hearts; a big-screen adaptation was inevitable, and it debuts today on Amazon Prime. Director/scripter Richard Tanne’s approach gets most of its emotional juice from the quietly sensitive performances by his two stars; alas, his 93-minute film can’t match the philosophical complexity of the 320-page book.

 

Tanne’s screenplay focuses almost exclusively on the two protagonists; many sidebar characters seem little more than afterthoughts. The result feels somewhat claustrophobic, although — again, to credit the stars — it’s easy to succumb to their predicament.

 

Seventeen-year-old Henry Page (Austin Abrams) has long coveted the editorship of his high school newspaper: a job he secures as his senior year begins. He’s surprised to discover, however, that he’ll be sharing the position with transfer student Grace Town (Lili Reinhart, recognized from TV’s Riverdale).

 

She’s an odd duck. She wears guys’ clothing, doesn’t seem interested in making herself look good, speaks only when spoken to … and, even then, with as few words as possible. It isn’t shyness; it feels more like an active disengagement from everything around her. She also has a pronounced, painful limp, and walks with a cane.

 

(Her being assigned the co-editorship seems a peculiar move on the part of the paper’s faculty advisor, since she expresses no interest in the job. We have to just roll with it.)

 

Henry fancies himself a romantic, despite never having had a girlfriend; he desperately wants to fall in love. His sudden proximity to Grace suggests possibilities, given that she enjoys love sonnets by Pablo Neruda. She graciously tolerates Henry’s presence, albeit in unusual ways. When he misses the bus, she offers him a lift in her car … which she asks him to drive (likely due to her injury, he assumes). But then she walks back to her place, and — a bit later — somebody comes along and drives her car home.

 

Grace invites Henry to spend an evening feeding koi in what looks like an abandoned factory (another detail that likely made more sense in Sutherland’s novel). She is relentlessly philosophical; “People are the ashes of dead stars,” she muses, staring into the night sky.

 

By day, though, she refuses to participate in journalism class, when Henry and the others blue-sky possible themes for the end-of-year final issue.

 

Henry, acutely sensitive to the moods of others, gradually realizes that Grace is damaged: not just physically, but also emotionally. Withdrawn. Unable to connect … but — and this, he senses, is key — not necessarily unwilling.

 

Tanne doesn’t wait too long to reveal what troubles her so; Henry then is drawn even more strongly into her orbit, once he understands the reason behind her moody vulnerability. We can’t help being charmed by the slow, cautiously careful manner in which he gradually wins her trust.

 

At home, he practices the Japanese art form of kintsukuroi, in which small bowls or pots are smashed into pieces and then reassembled, the result becoming more beautiful for having been broken. The metaphor, as it applies to Henry’s approach to Grace, is obvious.

 

Abrams is note-perfect as a nervous, bashful guy figuring out, step by step, how to connect with his first love. He and Sarah Jones also share a nice dynamic; she’s Henry’s older sister Suds, a medical student enduring her own agony, having just been dumped by her boyfriend. She bitterly explains the physiology of a broken heart: that the brain sends the same signals it does when one is in physical pain (hence the book’s title).

 

Abrams’ one serious flaw: He mumbles. Quite a lot. Chunks of his dialogue are difficult to discern.

 

Reinhart radiates a forlorn, heartbreaking calmness; we desperately want Grace to smile, an act that seems utterly beyond her. She’s crippled not by her physical injury, but by an unfathomable weight of pain; we can almost see it, given the way Reinhart carries herself.

 

When Grace finally displays candor, it emerges in a torrent that leaves Henry breathless.

 

“Being young is so painful,” she observes, “it’s almost too much. The teenage years are limbo: halfway between being a kid, and an adult. And adults are just scarred kids who were lucky enough to make it out of limbo alive.”

 

(I do love that last line.)

 

Composer Stephen James Taylor backs this developing dynamic with a blend of high school garage band aesthetic, heard during daytime activities; and expressionistic, melancholy themes that exemplify Grace’s nighttime realm of pain and grief.

 

Henry has two best friends, who also work with him on the school paper. Kara Young is a perky, mischievous force of nature as La, struggling with her sexuality and dying to be noticed by fellow journalist Cora (Coral Peña). Henry and La’s mutual friend Muz (C.J. Hoff) is … a blank page. Tanne doesn’t even try to flesh him out; he’s simply there on occasion.

 

(What’s with the strange names in this story? Suds, Muz and La???)

 

Bruce Altman and Meg Gibson do their best during fleeting scenes as Henry’s parents; they seem progressive and compassionate, but otherwise don’t register more than the furniture in their living room. Robert Clohessy (a longtime fixture on TV’s Blue Bloods) gets even less to do, as the mysterious individual who repeatedly collects Grace’s car.

 

The story’s resolution isn’t much of a surprise, in part because the primary character dynamic and frequent philosophical musings share a more than a little with Disney’s adaptation of Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, which debuted a few months back. 

 

That said, I do love Tanne’s final scene, with its demonstration of devoted friendship: its own, equally strong form of love. I suspect, however, that Sutherland’s fans will find this film frustratingly superficial.