When she fails, she falls to the ground and slams her cane in frustration. Her most affecting scene takes place as she hobbles down a high school track and tries, in vain, to sprint down a straightaway. Grace’s attempts to come to terms with her disability serve as a major part of her story arc and are perhaps the most fully realized part of her character. In fact, outside of one line where La says “it kills me when speaks Spanish,” their ethnicities have no bearing on their characters and adds to the sense of shallow diversity. Every other notable character is white.īecause La, Cora, and Kem each see little screen time, and never share scenes with others of the same race, they each feel tokenized. People of color appear in Chemical Hearts through characters like La (played by Young, the daughter of Belizean immigrants), Cora (played by Peña, Dominican), and the teacher who leads the high school newspaper, Kem Sharma (Adhir Kalyan, South African of Indian descent). Beyond that, she doesn’t see much development at all. Grace, ostensibly a lead, has a backstory but functions to shepherd Henry through his first major relationship and teach him about love. Other supporting characters like Grace’s mother, Henry’s mother, and Henry’s sister all pop up at various points but they only exist to make sure interesting things happen to Henry. Female supporting characters Lola “La” Haynes (Kara Young) and Cora Hernandez (Coral Peña) spend the film navigating their burgeoning romantic relationship but never talk about anything else. The color grading in particular effectively communicates the emotions the film reaches for, even as the writing prevents us from getting there.ĭoes it pass the Bechdel Test ? YES, but barelyĬhemical Hearts only passes the Bechdel Test by its strictest reading. Albert Salas shoots with more inventiveness than the film deserves. If Chemical Hearts has one worthy element, it’s the cinematography. One has to wonder why the writers told this particular story at all. Rather than interrogate such stereotypes, Chemical Hearts employs them, stunting Grace’s character development in the meantime. It freely relies on tropes such as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Inspirationally Disabled Love Interest, and Dream-Crushing Handicap. The film simply doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. Henry even has a neurosurgeon sister at the ready to explain the physical effects of heartbreak. In the attempts to add depth, the film throws several clumsy and obvious metaphors at the viewer: Henry “Page,” who has always wanted to be a writer, is saved by a girl named “Grace.” Grace compares herself to Henry’s hobby of repairing broken pottery with gold, a practice known as kintsugi, yelling “I’m not one of your vases” in a climactic argument. Ultimately a paint-by-numbers YA romance, any savvy viewer will see each “twist” coming from a mile away. (Literally, Henry introduces himself by telling the audience nothing interesting has ever happened to him.) While his friends may be people of color or LGBTQ, their stories are relegated in favor of the story’s least interesting character. Supporting characters, Grace included, feel thinly written as stereotypes that serve his character development. Tanne employs a laser focus on Henry with the result that viewers never see events from another character’s perspective. Writers: Screenplay by Richard Tanne □□□□ based on the novel by Krystal Sutherland □□□□Įarlier this year, writer-director Richard Tanne adapted Krystal Sutherland’s YA novel Our Chemical Hearts into a film for Amazon, which follows a high school senior named Henry Page (Austin Abrams) and his romance with Grace Town (Lili Reinhart), a mysterious transfer student who walks with a cane.
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