ONTD Original: The Tomfoolishness of Flop Film "Where Hands Touch"

[beysactingcoach]

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Just when your Black History Month celebration begins, OP swings in on a chandelier drops her pants and craps on it. Swirl historian Amma Asante has been ripped to shreds about her latest filmé, Where Hands Touch. It got released in late 2018 but well, it floppedT. Asante was subject to hours and hours of beclownment and well when you try to forge a love story between a black girl and a Hitler youth, you deserve to be cussed out by Black Twitter and Spike Lee forever and ever, amen. This movie is chock full of lightskint clownery and weird fetishist foolery, but here are the most WTF moments of Where Hands Touch staring Amandla Stenberg and George McKay. Check out the trailer above or don’t just read this instead. Or don’t read it. There are some spoilers but come on none of y'all was seeing this after its social media dragging so why even bother with the tags? OP has laid it on the line to bring you this.


Summary: She’s a young biracial girl with a white German mother and black father who must deal with the Nazi regime and the racist sentiment that black German children corrupted racial purity who falls in love with a Hitler Youth.

Let's begin:
Whew, when you begin this war torn swirl movie with a James Baldwin quote, you already know you are in for some tomfoolery on a whole other level. The quote: “there are days when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it”. Is sis referring to our little Aryan nation romantic lead or??????


Possibly the most fucked up meet cute in film history. Ummm, the swirl first encounter each other when he, in his lovely Gestapo accessories, runs over Leyna with his bike. Accidentally of course. Leyna looks like Harvey “Two Face” Dent while the white boy whispers he’s sorry and rolls off into the smog filled city.


The infamous “n---ermusic scene” - the clip that emerged all over that social media. The context of the scene makes it worse. Leyna’s and her lightskindedness decides to sneak and follow where her brother Koen goes and what the Hitler Youth actually does and like this is like … like no black person with some damn sense would like literally ever do this. Why would you do this Leyna? There’s a blinding sunlight on the Hitler Youths when the white finds her which lmaooooooooooooooo the production is either hella bright or incredibly dusty. Aryan Prince admits to spying on her (wow, that’s really how you reel them in) and all of a sudden delivers some stilted lines about seeing one whole ass black person in picture and then going in about jazz music which he EXPLICITLY to his credit calls jazz.
The white boy hearing n---ermusic:

The WRITING IS ABSOLUTE SHITE! SHITE I TELL YOU! SHITE! THERE’S NO REAL CHARACTER INTRODUCTION - NO DEVELOPMENT. WHERE IS THE SMOOTH TRANSITION TO “YOUR FATHER IS A NAY-GROW” TO “HAVE YOU EVER SWAM IN THE NIGHT?” LIKE ASANTE’S OBSESSION WITH PINK DICK HAS CLEARLY SPILLED OUT ONTO THE SCREEN BECAUSE LIKE NOWHERE DOES THIS BLACK GIRL QUESTION WHY THIS WHITE HITLER YOUTH BOY IS BEING NICE TO HER? End of rant, but not really.


Ummmm endless plot holes galore, I thought I fell through one. This couple tries to being clandestine relationship but yet Lenya’s mother knows about her new white boyfriend and this white boy has no other Hitler youth near him even though all the Nazis in this seem to appear in groups or pairs. How is he sneaking off? How are they not getting caught?

The white boy sneaks her into his house and plays the Billie Holiday song “Let’s Call a Heart to Heart”. Leyna then says in her to him in her horrible German accent “We can dance” - this delivery prompted OP to pause the viewing experience and listen to the Men Without Hats classic.

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Y’all please, it would behoove us to put out some missing persons’ flyers so we can find some character development for these folks. Like why does the the KindFuhrer like her? Why is he drawn to her? Why is there no establishment of conflict that he’s a damn Junior Nazi and she is black though she’s been called countless racial slurs in the beginning of this movie? Why does Leyna not question this? Where do we see this white child’s emotional struggle about what he does and his attraction to Leyna? None of this is addressed. How come there’s so little to no backstory for the supporting people like Nazi Junior’s father, Nazi Senior to at least fulfill the objective that the son is not like his father?

UPDATE! (OP wrote this as she watched the movie and with less than 20 minutes before the end of this two-hour endeavor, drumroll please… WE FINALLY GOT SOME INTERPERSONAL SWIRL CONFLICT! CAN I GET A HELL YEAH?!?!!?!?!?!?!!?!?)


WELP! SHE PREGNANT (OH YEAH and she’s also at a concentration camp and lo and behold her Aryan Prince is also here). Also the editing is pretty umm lackluster - we as the audience have no idea where we’re going, we’re just teleporting. We’re outside, now we’re in Nazi Junior’s home, now we’re out walking to work. Well at least the editing isn’t as horrible as that movie staring that weird kid from The War at Home.

OP finally remembered Nazi Junior’s name - it’s Lutz! Well Lutz is a bit of a putz because he tries to make some hackneyed plan to dress Leyna up in a Gestapo uniform to sneak her out because totally original - she doesn’t do it.

So Nazi Senior shoots and kills his progeny after he tried to be reunited and hug Leyna. But like just seconds earlier - Nazi Senior reveals he knows about his son’s swirl. Expectedly, he’s angry about this but also fears for his son’s life because he could be killed if he refuses order or if the relationship is discovered. However, when Lutz to his father reveals he’s bout to be a grand paw paw, you’d think Nazi Senior would explode at this news but he doesn’t he just kind of grimaces like he was given 18 McD’s nuggets instead of 20.

It basically peaks there. She’s rescued by ‘Murica! And reunited with her mother and brother which OP did get a bit teary eyed.
So the whole movie is basically:

Too long, won't ever read: Amma Asante's obsession with the swirl has gone too far and we are given a horrible, twisted after school special movie with a flat, dimensionless mess of a story chockfull of foolery, clownery and just dustiness galore.

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