‘Chemical Hearts’ Is a Somber Teen Romance With Adult Depth

Sandra Miska

The high and lows of first love are explored in “Chemical Hearts,” a moving teen drama that follows Henry Page (Austin Abrams), a young aspiring writer. Henry is searching for something bigger than himself when he first meets Grace Town (Lili Reinhart) at the start of his senior year of high school. Grace, a transfer student from a nearby high school, has been selected to edit the school newspaper alongside Henry. He is immediately drawn to the intelligent and reserved beauty of Grace, but her tragic past prevents her from fully returning his feelings. 

Director Richard Tanne, who also adapted the screenplay from Krystal Sutherland’s novel “Our Chemical Hearts,” neatly sets up the scene where we first meet Henry. He is a good student who’s respected by his peers, has a nice life living with his happily married parents (Bruce Altman, Catherine Curtin) in a New Jersey suburb. The only less-than-idyllic aspect of his home life is that his older sister, nurse Sadie (Sarah Jones), has had to move back home after having her heart broken.

His stable existence doesn’t do much to inspire Henry’s writing, but this all changes during his first school newspaper meeting of his senior year when he meets Grace. The school newspaper doesn’t only bring the two together, but the releases of the issues nicely breaks up the action and show passage of time. Reinhart gives an understated performance, and Grace, who uses a cane, has an aurora of mystery around her, as she’s not exactly forthcoming about her past and the reason for her disability and why she switched schools.

But Henry, who is determined but not pushy, slowly gets her to open up to him. It comes out that she was in a car accident months earlier that killed her longtime boyfriend and destroyed her knee. In her previous life as a star athlete and devoted girlfriend, she probably would not have gotten to know Henry, but in the present day, the two sensitive kids bond over poetry; she challenges in a way no one else has up to this point. Henry falls deeper and deeper for Grace, but it becomes apparent that she is not ready to fully give herself emotionally. It would be easy for him to become impatient and petulant, but Abrams plays him as an old soul with compassion, but he has his limits.

“Chemical Hearts” isn’t completely without melodrama, but it has a depth to it that is usually lacking in teen dramas. “It was important to me to make a movie that didn’t talk down to its younger audience,” Tanne told Entertainment Voice. “I hope it stirs the pot a little and moves them in some way.” The director revealed that he found inspiration in more adult films that dealt with obsession and heartbreak, films like “Vertigo,” “In the Mood for Love,” “Blue is the Warmest Color,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

“Chemical Hearts” also has an impressive supporting cast that includes rising actors Kara Young and Coral Peña. Young plays La, Henry’s confident close friend and colleague at the newspaper, while Peña plays the young woman she is in love with. Both actresses spoke with EV about what it meant to them to be involved in a positive LGBTQI teen storyline.

“It means everything to be a part of the history of black love, queer love in mainstream film,” said Peña, “It means so much to the community that we’re in. We don’t even know who we’ll be affecting,”

“I think this brown queer visibility is incredibly important to black LGBTQI movement,” stated Young. “It’s really important to see yourself and to know that you can see a little bit of yourself in both of these characters. We’ve been talking about the fact that the world is not in conflict with our queerness, which is really, really special, to normalize two girls loving each other.”

While “Chemical Hearts” ends on a hopeful note, Tanne wisely did not wrap up the love story neatly with a bow. “If it had a happy fairytale ending, what’s the point?” He asked. “It would completely violate the verisimilitude and authenticity that, in the case of the book and, hopefully, the movie that we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

“I’d say I’m fairly satisfied with where it went,” said Abrams of the ending. “I feel like after what they had been through with one another, it went the best, or more realistic way.”

“Chemical Hearts” begins streaming Aug. 21 on Amazon Prime Video.