Uneven wartime tale gets best from eclectic cast
Where Hands Touch (M, 122 mins) Directed by Amma Asante Reviewed by James Croot ★★★
Kerstin Schlager (Abbie Cornish) thought she was keeping her daughter safe. As the Nazis stepped up their campaign of ethnic cleansing, the mother of two thought it would be easier for her family to be invisible in Berlin, rather than stay at their rural Rhineland home.
‘‘Life will be good again – I promise,’’ she tells Leyna (Amandla Stenberg) and son Koen (Tom Sweet).
But with an absent, Africa-born father and an ‘‘un-German’’ face, Leyna is viewed with open suspicion and hostility in school and on the streets.
With the help of her brother-inlaw, Kerstin manages to get forged papers saying Leyna has been sterilised, but those don’t last long after a confrontation by a vindictive official.
More sympathetic is Lutz (George Mackay). Despite being a member of the Hitler Youth, he’s captivated by Leyna, even if he does initially nearly run her over with his bike.
However, the pair’s nascent romance is cut short by fate and the cruelty of others, only for them to be reunited in the most unlikely and desperate of situations.
Already known for two impressive, inspired-by-history dramas – A United Kingdom, Belle – former Grange Hill star turned writer-director Amma Asante’s latest project is a well-put together World War II tale of star-crossed lovers.
But it’s let down only by an overabundance of stilted dialogue and a touch too much melodrama.
Perhaps it’s fatigue from viewing too many similar setups, but there was a slightly leaden predictability about proceedings (Leyna’s journey at times seemed to strongly echo Jamie Graham’s in Empire of the Sun), leavened only by a brilliantly realised and haunting finale.
An opening quote from the now ubiquitous American author and activist James Baldwin (‘‘There were days when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it’’) and a reference to what they were doing to African-Americans on the other side of the Atlantic at the same time attempts to widen the movie’s impact and get viewers thinking.
But I couldn’t help but feel they were parallels far better expressed last year by Dee Rees’ criminally under-seen Mudbound.
Credit Asante, though, for getting the best from an eclectic cast. While Stenberg doesn’t reach the heights of her performance in The Hate U Give, this is further evidence of her undoubted qualities.
Likewise, Sunshine on Leith’s Mackay does well in crafting a sympathetic, conflicted character, and Australian actress Cornish (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) as well as Doctor Who’s ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, provide solid support in key roles.
Dramatically it’s a mixed bag, but Where Hands Touch does offer some moments of magic.