"Chasing Amy"
                             A Film Review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                          WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
                               May 17, 1997


    I'm coming somewhat belatedly to "Chasing Amy": it has been playing for a
couple of months now and my initial reaction based on what I had heard and
read about it was that I would pass it up. It sounded as though it was going
to be just another "all she needs is a good you-know-what" to cure her of her
lesbianism flick, i.e., a straight boy fantasy like that dreadful one that
came out of Hollywood a few years ago (I'm blanking on the title, with one of
the Baldwin brothers and Kelly Lynch). Then someone whose judgement I trust in
such matters told me about a few of the scenes in it and said its treatment of
the lesbian central character was o.k., so I decided to see for myself. And
I'm glad I did. This is the third film by Kevin Smith who has become something
of a legend among young independent filmmakers as a result of his first, award
winning "Clerks" which was followed by "Mallrats" and now "Chasing Amy." All
are set in suburban Northern New Jersey (where Smith grew up, lives, and
works) and all three feature one of a fictional family of Jones sisters. In
"Chasing Amy" it is comic book artist Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) who
instantly becomes the love interest of a young man named Holden (Bern
Affleck), who, with his lifelong buddy Banky (Jason Lee) creates a comic book
series called "Bluntman and Chronic" that is based on two actual denizens of
the suburban drug culture with whom he meets periodically to pay them for
providing him his subject matter.

      Although on first meeting nothing at all happens between Alyssa and
Holden (they play darts in a bar) Holden is smitten and convinced that they
had "a moment" so he completely full of himself when Alyssa gets a mutual
friend to invite him to a club in New York the next night. When she sings a
number with her old band (led by "Go Fish" actor Guinivere Turner) and
dedicates it to "someone special" he assumes that means him, and is utterly
floored to discover that it means a woman standing next to him whom Alyssa
makes out with passionately for the rest of the evening. Talk about deflated
ego. At any rate, Alyssa still wants to pursue a friendship with Holden and
they hang out together a lot and Alyssa helps Holden get a more realistic
picture of sexual orientation than the Neanderthal "het is the natural way"
ideas he harbors. When he finally can't stand it anymore and declares his love
for Alyssa she runs away-- at first--only to run back into his arms a minute
later. And in an utterly persuasive scene in which she tells him how she came
to the conclusion that she loved him too, we see for perhaps the first time on
film a lesbian character moving into a heterosexual relationship that doesn't
seem a het male fantasy sell out. They do love each other, but the course of
this love does not run smoothly. There's Banky's obstructionism as his
jealousy of Alyssa comes to the fore. And there's Holden's own hang ups, not
any longer with Alyssa's lesbian past, but at her history of sexual escapades
with guys in high school that Banky digs up.

     Alyssa, who is one of the most independent minded and together young
womencharacters you've seen on the screen in years, finally shows him the
door. Holden's well-thought out but utterly thoughtless proposed solution to
these problematic relationships seems to force Alyssa to close the door on him
for good. It's Bluntman, hearing Holden's story, who sees what's happening and
tells him of his own similar situation with a woman named Amy. He, too, threw
away the love of his life, and spends his days now, in his mind "chasing Amy."
In an epilogue, a year later, Alyssa is having great success with her comic
book and seems back with women, Banky is on his own and Holden has created a
more personal genre of comic book, one called "Chasing Amy," a copy of which
he gives to Alyssa. This time she does not run after him. Whether or not she
will after she reads "Chasing Amy" depends, presumably, on whether or not he's
finally figured things out.

<Linda Lopez McAlister is Chair and Professor of Women's Studies at the
University of South Florida in Tampa, FL.  She does feminist movie
reviews for "The Women's Show" a feminist/womanist weekly radio program
on WMNF-FM public radio station in Tampa at 88.5 FM>

Copyright 1997.  All rights reserved.