Chas­ing Chas­ing Amy – first-look review

It’s a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged that the least gay sport is ice hock­ey and the least gay ​‘gay’ movie is Kevin Smith’s loved and hat­ed 1997 indie rom-com Chas­ing Amy. Take this piv­otal scene: in an ice hock­ey sta­di­um park­ing lot, a man with a goa­tee, sport­ing a plaid-shirt-over-white-tee com­bo is slut-sham­ing a woman with a pinned-up blow-dry and a leather jack­et. Today, this cou­ple seem to have no erot­ic chem­istry or date-appro­pri­ate cloth­ing. But this was the 90s – when rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ​‘youth’ were dom­i­nat­ed by the super-clean fan­tasies of Friends and Sex And The City.

Dur­ing this lovers’ row, cis-het Hold­en (Ben Affleck) harangues queer Amy (Joey Lau­ren Adams) over her past three­somes with men and women until she cries out that she was ​“an exper­i­men­tal girl” until he ​“sat­ed” her. This is one of many lines mark­ing Chas­ing Amy as writ­ten by a cis-het man with a sav­iour-dick com­plex. Watch­ing it, you won­der what Smith (who also made the 1994 cult film Clerks), a trail­blaz­er of mum­blecore, ston­er com­e­dy, could have been think­ing. In a new doc­u­men­tary super­fan Sav Rodgers – a trans male film­mak­er – tries to find out. Or rather, he tries to try. As Sav exam­ines the orig­i­nal movie’s con­tro­ver­sial pow­er over his life, Chas­ing Chas­ing Amy emerges as a bag­gy, ami­able yet frus­trat­ing film, with a sting in its limp tail.

The form of Chas­ing Chas­ing Amy – mem­oir meets fan film meets cul­tur­al his­to­ry – is promis­ing­ly nov­el, but suf­fers from too much art­less truth on the one hand (Sav’s love sto­ry with girl­friend Riley) and Kevin Smith’s disin­gen­u­ous ​‘I’m just a bro’ act on the oth­er. The prob­lem lies part­ly in its premise, for Sav was saved by watch­ing Chas­ing Amy, back when he was a sui­ci­dal teenage girl, and part­ly it lies in the deci­sion by Sav, a bright, gen­tle per­son – but not a scin­til­lat­ing char­ac­ter per se – to put his own life on film. The talk­ing head inter­vie­wees can’t pull apart Chas­ing Amy with­out seem­ing to give Sav a kick­ing. This is a film that suf­fers from too much sen­si­tiv­i­ty and no attack – until it explodes from an unex­pect­ed quarter.

Every­one in the film appears gagged by anx­i­ety around LGBTQ rep­re­sen­ta­tion, except Sav’s hero, Smith. One claim Smith makes is that he want­ed to ​“whip in some gay con­tent for my [gay] broth­er” – casu­al­ly betray­ing his sense of enti­tle­ment. The mouthy, chaot­ic charm of Chas­ing Amy places it along­side Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and the les­bian Go Fish – films famed for voic­ing alter­na­tives to dom­i­nant white and straight cul­ture. But scenes like the one where Hold­en and Amy com­pare dick ver­sus tongue pen­e­tra­tion, and Amy demon­strates a bizarre, spread-fin­gered form of fist­ing, are writ­ten from a pro­found­ly het­ero imag­i­na­tion. Sav, how­ev­er, is far too awed to query Smith’s pruri­ent ham-fist­ing of the queer expe­ri­ence. Nor does he offer nuanced, detailed insight into why Amy’s flu­id sex­u­al­i­ty offered him a frame­work for his identity.

The only elo­quent and crit­i­cal voice, here, is Go Fish writer Guin­e­vere Turn­er, whose ​“emo­tion­al romance” with Kevin Smith’s cre­ative part­ner, Scott Mosier, inspired Chas­ing Amy. Turn­er is a gem and a high­light is lis­ten­ing to her talk about the begin­nings of les­bian indie movie-mak­ing, but Turner’s close­ness to Mosier and Smith appears to have damp­ened her ​“decades of dyke rage” against the film. How­ev­er, all is not lost, for, final­ly, in true indie spir­it, the very hes­i­tan­cy of Sav’s inter­view tech­nique allows an ugly truth to emerge.

Sub­text has a fun­ny way of insin­u­at­ing itself into a gap. Much of the film’s unin­ten­tion­al enter­tain­ment comes from watch­ing Smith’s friends step­ping around the turd of Smith’s icky imma­tu­ri­ties. But it’s with the arrival of ​‘Amy’ – Joey Lau­ren Adams – that we slide beneath Smith’s base­ball cap-wear­ing, pup­py-eyed mea cul­pa schtick.

Once Adams is seat­ed beside Smith, tilt­ed away from him, her mis­trust­ful body lan­guage tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry to the one she once spout­ed for the orig­i­nal movie’s pub­lic­i­ty about him lov­ing women. With­out spoil­ing any­thing, it’s suf­fi­cient to say that ​‘Amy’ her­self expos­es the sick­ness of the straight white male ​‘chase’. Hers is the flam­ing torch that any non-cis-het per­son might be expect­ed to take up. Instead, Sav switch­es focus to Har­vey Wein­stein, who select­ed Chas­ing Amy as a Mira­max film. Wein­stein becomes a con­ve­nient mon­strous shad­ow, dwarf­ing rev­e­la­tions about Smith’s behav­iour. He is the bête noir that allows Rodgers’ film to end in a vague­ly victim‑y, vague­ly hope­ful space.

By mak­ing this film about his iden­ti­ty, Sav Rodgers is oblig­ed to dish the truth. There’s no one defin­i­tive queer per­son or queer movie, but an LGBTQ per­spec­tive can include humour, irony, empa­thy and rage against hypocrisy, het­ero­nor­ma­tive or oth­er­wise. It’s hard to take down your heroes, but it’s dis­ap­point­ing that Rodgers nev­er once rais­es his fist.