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WHERE HANDS TOUCH: Just Another Star-Crossed Tragedy

WHERE HANDS TOUCH: Just Another Star-Crossed Tragedy

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WHERE HANDS TOUCH: Just Another Star-Crossed Tragedy

If there’s one point to take away from Amma Asante‘s Where Hands Touch is that nobody can accuse the British filmmaker of making her movie with bad intentions. After exploding on the scene with the sweeping 18th Century period drama Belle in 2013 and her good-natured follow-up A United Kingdom, Asante’s third feature has finally arrived on Australian shores separated from its understated controversy of late 2018, a mild uproar which was largely overshadowed by the recent Oscar ceremony frenzy and the general week-to-week hysterics that seemingly come married with every new release nowadays.

Make Love, Not War

Love in the time of war is a subject that’s been mined throughout every single historical battle – Gone with the Wind and Doctor Zhivago set the template for what Reds and Ride with the Devil would continue – but sometimes the romances of lovestruck heroes pulled apart by war whilst they grow closer together doesn’t quite align with the conflicts that define them.

The proposal of watching Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale wanting to bump uglies during the Pearl Harbour bombings not only seemed insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but most audiences saw it as a disrespectful move to the lives lost in the attack. For them to work, these heated affairs have to be as fiery and incendiary as the warfare that surrounds them, a bond that’s hard to sell when, with Where Hands Touch, you’ve got the Holocaust as your back-drop.

WHERE HANDS TOUCH: Just Another Star-Crossed Tragedy
source: Rialto Distribution

This film places our teenage lovers in the heart of Nazi Germany during the height of World War 2, where Leyna (Amandla Stenberg), whose feelings of being ostracized are inflated by the horrible racial epithets hurled at her by the English speaking Germans that patrol the streets. Not only is she a black female in 1940’s Berlin, but she’s what was crudely dubbed as a “Rhineland Bastard”, a generation of black children spawned from black French soldiers in World War I and white German women. It’s this aspect of Leyna’s character that clearly enticed Asante to pen this script, where much like her two previous features, she’s supplanted the typical clean-cut white protagonist with a more defined black character who engages in an interracial relationship.

It’s the choice of a white male partner this time that has caused some audiences to refrain from watching it at all (and the source of its recent controversy). Alongside her younger brother and hard-working single mother (Abbie Cornish, delivering every line through a furrowed brow), Leyna leaves her home of Rhineland for Berlin, hoping for a safer solution as the war rages on, which is where she catches the attention of Lutz (George MacKay), a coerced member of the Hitler Youth.

It’s a classic Romeo and Juliet situation, and much like Shakespeare’s oft-copied formula, it seems to be an ill-fated romance driven by lust than any real emotional correspondence – it only takes a single date for them to be utterly devoted to each other, with Lutz quick to abandon the ideals driven into him by his slick-haired Nazi father (Christopher Eccleston).

Harrowing Hardships

Asante doesn’t skimp on the sentimental value of this historical setting, especially when the action switches from the grey streets of Berlin to the even more colourless interiors of the concentration camp that Leyna is eventually shipped off to. The Holocaust will forever be a vulnerable point to probe, which means that despite the quality of the art that reframes it, it is bound to provoke a reaction – the same principles that apply to killing a pet or parents dying on-screen – and here Asante uses it as an environment of conflict and contrast.

This contrast pervades every element; each relationship has a built-in conflict that nudges each partner into opposite directions, especially when it comes to the central pair’s contentious connections with their single parents, and how their individual hard-work – from his father to her mother – to create a better future for their children ultimately back-fires on them in unexpected fashions.

WHERE HANDS TOUCH: Just Another Star-Crossed Tragedy
source: Rialto Distribution

It’s this idea of surviving at all costs that rings true in this narrative – despite being explored in hundreds of other World War II dramas before – but being paired with such a superficial fling dulls this drama into melodramatic tedium. The pair’s actions, once blinded by affection, are simply too predictable and frivolous to really make us care if they do or don’t stick together – there’s nothing electric or evocative about their secret affair, despite how taboo it seems on paper. MacKay and Stenberg provide reliable screen presences, but the way their mismatched liaison is played out never quite transcends the grim reality with which it’s foregrounded in.

This disconnect between their trite infatuation and the global war which acts as the catalyst for their meeting is aggravated by the film’s soap-opera visual surface, where soft-lighting and unmarked costumes – somewhat emulating period dramas of the past – scrubs any sense of real devastation, despite the amount of cliched scenes of John Doe’s being picked off in firing lines that come our way.  It’s too glossy, too clean and when anchored by such equally shallow coming-of-age romance, doesn’t really amount to much.

Where Hands Touch: Conclusion

Where Hands Touch is a disappointing and sketchy depiction of a tragic romance during one of history’s darkest periods, which features two chief characters who individually provide intriguing basis’ for different – and more grounded – stories to be told through their singular viewpoints. It isn’t the implausibility of the script which causes this film’s failure, it’s the inability to create complex or practical characters from these fragments of reality. Despite what the controversy may say, it’s the believability of the romance that breaks this film, not the romance itself.

Asante has developed intriguing romance and dramas within tangible political and historical contexts before, and despite my thoughts on this film, I hope she continues to keep making movies and telling stories the way she wants to. Every director can have an occasional misstep – it’s how they build and use it to make their next piece of art that truly defines great directors, and I believe Asante will make this happen.

What are your thoughts on romantic dramas set during times of war? Let us know in the comments below!

Where Hands Touch premiered in the USA on September 18, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.

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