Chemical Hearts

Teenager Henry Page considers himself a hopeless romantic but has never fallen in love. He aspires to be a writer and to be chosen as editor of his high school newspaper. The newspaper's faculty advisor disappoints him by making him share the editor position with Grace Town, a new student in his class. Grace is physically handicapped—walking with a limp and using a cane. She is also sullen and surly and initially rejects Henry's attempts to talk to her.

After missing his bus one day, Henry and Grace wind up walking home along the same route. Although estranged at first, she relents slightly and offers to drive him home once they reach her house. However, she refuses to drive and has him drive her car and leave it at his house. The next day, a mysterious middle-aged man retrieves her car without speaking to Henry.

As Grace begins to let Henry into her life, she shows him an abandoned factory with a pool containing koi fish. He falls in love with her despite her mixed signals and obvious indications that she is emotionally traumatized. He follows her one day and finds her at the grave of a man who, judging from the tombstone, died as a teenager. Upon further investigation, he learns that the dead man was killed in a car accident and that Grace had been in the car when it happened—causing her disability and leading to her changing schools.

Their romance peaks at a Halloween party, after which they have sex (and Henry loses his virginity). They have a romantic few days together, but Grace is still troubled.

On the anniversary of the car accident, Henry goes to her house and learns that she has been living in the room of her deceased boyfriend, with his mother and father (the man who had picked up her car earlier). She finds Henry there and they argue as she is clearly still in love with a dead man. Henry cannot handle this information and they break up.

One day, after being told by Dom’s Father that Grace has gone missing, Henry finds her in the koi pool, wearing what was to have been her wedding dress. He takes her back to her home.

As Henry's and Grace's senior year comes to an end, they avoid talking to one another at the school. Grace leaves the newspaper after taking some time off school. After the last issue of the newspaper is released, to which Henry has contributed a heartfelt essay about the biochemistry of teenagers, they meet in a school hallway. Their encounter is an emotional one and they hug, but then go their separate ways.

• Austin Abrams as Henry Page
• Lili Reinhart as Grace Town
• Kara Young as Lola
• Coral Peña as Cora
• C.J. Hoff as Murray
• Jordan Adelman as Student 14
• Sarah Jones as Sadie
• Adhir Kalyan as Kem Sharma
• Bruce Altman as Toby
• Catherine Curtin as Sarah

In June 2016, Awesomeness Films acquired the screen rights to Chemical Hearts.[1] In June 2019, it was announced Lili Reinhart and Austin Abrams had joined the cast of the film, with Richard Tanne directing from a screenplay he wrote. Principal photography began in June 2019 in New Jersey.[2]

It was released on August 21, 2020 on Prime Video.[3]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 62% of 82 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "For better and for worse, Chemical Hearts captures the well-worn ups and downs of melodramatic teenage love - and countless other films about it."[4] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews."[5]

Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com described the film as "sneakily subversive," and "very unpredictable," writing that, "there's much to be said for what Tanne has pulled off in Chemical Hearts, for his gentle and measured approach. You actually feel like you have been through something by the end." She added that "Lili Reinhart is a revelation. She has such gravitas as an actress," and that, "Abrams is a thoughtful presence, and best when he's forced to deal with her unpredictable behavior. Watch his reactions. He's paying such close attention to her, trying to read her face. These two young actors make this bond make sense."[6]

San Francisco Chronicle's G. Allen Johnson concluded his review by asserting that "what makes Chemical Hearts so good is it’s unafraid of its feelings. It tackles complicated emotional issues such as depression, suicide, sex and love with a straightforward honesty. For once, a film about young people is completely free of snark and irony."[7]

Writing for Time, Stephanie Zacharek opined that the film "captures the joy and agony—and the lasting scars—of teenage romance."[8]

David Ehrlich, reviewing for IndieWire, praised Tanne's direction of the film, writing that he employed "a more patient and open-ended aesthetic than you’d expect to find in a YA adaptation; shot on a 35mm stock that can make an entire bedroom vibrate with potential, some entire scenes are captured in just a handful of static medium-wide shots that aren’t afraid to set these characters adrift in a vast sea of their own feelings." He wrote that the film "has an uncanny way of capturing the basic combustibility of teenage feelings."[9]

• Chemical Hearts at IMDb