Mental health should be be talked about just as much as physical health
Lili Reinhart and Austin Abrams, stars of new teen romance Chemical Hearts, tell LAURA HARDING why being young is a painful time
and anxiety, looks thoughtful.
“It’s interesting because that monologue is very in line with how I feel and how I go about being in the spotlight.
“I very much talk about mental health all the time and I talk about my feelings and my emotions, especially with my friends, I am always talking about how I feel, which I’m sure can be kind of annoying but it’s so important to feel like you can talk about it.
“And my one piece of advice for people who are going through something like that is to keep talking about it.
The only way you can work through something is to talk about it and to acknowledge it
and to feel it,
Henry (second right) is a typical teen hanging out with his friends but becomes entranced by new girl, Grace so never try to suppress that, and so that was a great message that Grace is talking about to Henry.
“It’s ironic because she doesn’t really share too much with Henry. I think she’s a private girl, trying to not put her own struggles on him, which I understand, because he’s a new person in her life.”
Lili herself is conscious that as an actress she has a platform to raise awareness and wants to be sure she uses it. “I want to feel like the future generation coming after me, and even the Gen Zs like me, feel it’s an open discussion and it’s not something so taboo.
“I believe we are getting there, there is progress
being made in that regard, so that is encouraging, and I hope it continues and that mental health becomes something that is more easily talked about, especially in school. I think it should be talked about just as much as we talk about physical health.” In Chemical Hearts, the upheaval and strain of being young is made specific in the title of the school newspaper’s year-end issue, which Henry and Grace produce together: Teenage Limbo.
“That’s the definition of high school, for me,” Lili says. “When you’re a teenager, you are in this very strange place. You’re still under the supervision of a bunch of older people, but you’re also expected to be making clear, conscious decisions.
“You can vote but you can’t drink, you can drive, but you can’t rent a hotel room.
Limbo represents the contradictory circumstances that often surround being a teenager.”
For Euphoria star Austin Abrams,
23, who plays
Henry, returning to a classroom – was strange.
“I was 22 when I did this so there is a fair amount that changes in that time, a lot of things happen, your brain is really changing and your perspectives are changing.
“It’s definitely a strange thing to try to acquire that mental head space again.”
But Austin was drawn to re-uniting with Lili, who he first worked with many years ago.
“We worked with each other when we were about 15, so we already had a rapport and we just clicked as people. You just get lucky when it comes to that, you get lucky with those things. Lili was incredibly dedicated to getting this film made. It’s not anything like a typical teenage love story. It’s much more profound. Some things can be even more beautiful when they are ephemeral, and the relationship between Grace and Henry is one of those things.”
HOPE GAP
TOWARDS the end of writer-director William Nicholson’s portrait of a marriage in crisis, an embittered wife muses aloud, “That’s the thing about unhappiness. After a while it stops being interesting”.
Hope Gap is evidently aware of its flaws. Adapted from Nicholson’s 1999 play The Retreat From Moscow, this dialogue-heavy three-hander struggles to escape the gathering dust of its stage origins despite the efforts of cinematographer Anna Valdez Hanks to swoop endlessly over the chalk cliffs of the south coast, where iridescent rock pools are exposed by a retreating tide.
Bill Nighy is well suited to the role of a stuttering academic, who can barely articulate his frustration. Annette Bening valiantly goes into battle with an English accent as his aggrieved wife and ends up losing the war for our sympathy by repeatedly drawing attention to her mannered delivery.
Caught in the middle is God’s Own Country star Josh O’Connor, who lacks a compelling character arc outside of his perfunctory role as peacemaker between feuding parents.
The sun initially shines on secondary school history teacher Edward (Nighy) and wife Grace (Bening) as they casually orbit one other in the East Sussex coastal town of Seaford.
He indulges a fascination with Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Moscow flanked by toy soldiers on his desk while she pores over verses for her poetry anthology about the human condition.
Their common bond is a son, Jamie (O’Connor), who lives in London and rarely visits.
One week shy of their 29th wedding anniversary, Edward telephones Jamie secretly to come home for the weekend. It is part of a cowardly plan to tell Grace that he intends to leave her for another woman (Sally Rogers) then rely on Jamie to pick up some of the slivers of the shattered marriage.
On Sunday morning, while his wife is at mass, Edward confesses everything to his tearful son, who had hoped to return to London to resolve his own relationship woes.
“How long will it take? I don’t want to be here when you do it,” asks Jamie.
“Give me half an hour,” responds his old man wearily.
Hope Gap fails to bridge a divide between us and the anguished characters. Nicholson crafts meaty dialogue including a zinging speech for
Bening, which likens the breakdown of a marriage to bloodless murder.
While his carefully crafted words land with precision, the raw emotions behind them are little more than glancing blows.
Love hurts much more than this.