Chemical Hearts

Henry is in his final year of school and complains that nothing has ever happened to him; he wants to be a writer and has nothing to write about. Grace, newly arrived, walks with a cane, talks to nobody, and turns up opposite him when she is made co-editor of the school paper. Henry thinks he has found what he expected from a first love, but what Grace is carrying is not love, it is someone she lost. Richard Tanne wrote and directed. The source is Krystal Sutherland's young adult novel Our Chemical Hearts. Lili Reinhart plays Grace and Austin Abrams plays Henry. It went out on 21 August 2020 on Amazon Prime Video and in a handful of drive-in cinemas, the distribution shape of the pandemic period. The reviews split. Reinhart's performance and the chemistry between the leads were praised, while the slow pace, the cliches and the over-aestheticised tone were not. Some argued the film romanticises mental illness rather than dealing with it. Readers of the book were unhappy with the changes to the plot and with the ending. Who it is for: viewers who like young adult romance and Lili Reinhart. Who it is not for: anyone expecting grief and trauma handled seriously. The film uses pain as an aesthetic element, which is what it was criticised for most.