"Chemical Hearts" Director Richard Tanne on Love, Loss, and Alfred Hitchcock
Richard Tanne’s latest film, Chemical Hearts, is a romantic coming-of-age film based on the novel Our Chemical Hearts written by Krystal Sutherland. High school senior Henry Page (Austin Abrams) goes through his days quietly and unnoticed. He is a romantic at heart despite never having a girlfriend, and he works for his school newspaper as an aspiring writer. Henry’s life is changed when he meets Grace Town (Lili Reinhart), a mysterious new student at their school. Her guarded demeanor, her hard-to-get attitude towards Henry, and the limp and cane that she walks with reveal that she is hiding more than she lets on. The secrets of her traumatic past and the ghosts of which still haunt her only cause Henry to fall harder in love and thus result in a heartbreaking drama.
Tanne serves as the writer, adapter, producer, and director for this project. His first feature, Southside with You, focused on the first date of former president and former first lady Barack and Michelle Obama. When asked what his takeaways were from his first film that led him confidently into Chemical Hearts, Tanne said “I wanted to be on set and know what I was doing. I wanted to have an A plan, a B plan, and a C plan… but ultimately that felt kind of inhibiting. On this film, I wanted to be open to the spontaneity”.
He worked closely with the different departments on the film, especially when it came to the visual representation of something symbolic. Whether that be hand-selecting the colors that are worn by and surround the characters or working with his lighting team and set designer to create a picturesque tableau for one of the film’s most emotionally climactic scenes, he likes to take a hands-on approach to filmmaking. The ideas are not solely his own, though, as he cites an Alfred Hitchcock classic as a source of inspiration:
“The idea to do it this way, to assign colors to characters and then evolve those colors was stolen from Vertigo, actually. The way that Kim Novak is green and Jimmy Stewart is red, and the more involved they become, they start taking on each other’s colors…I wanted to do that because it helps tell the story of Henry’s obsession and of Grace’s conflict between these two people and these different facets of herself.”
The end result of Tanne’s attention to detail is a sweet and introspective film about young love and loss. With heartfelt performances from the cast, a touching melodic score, and the incomparable look of 35mm, Chemical Hearts is available to stream on Amazon now.
Check out our full interview below and let us know your thoughts in the comments.