Chasing Amy (2000, DVD)

Chasing Amy is a perfect relationship mess. I ve seen it four hours before jumping in a relationship that has not been promising anything in the beginning, started more as a joke just to have myself some good time, but that is leading into phase where I have to start thinking and learning some shocking truth about my girlfriend already. Life would be much easier if we had not had to think of certain things, if we could float and be happy with that, if waking up with the person you love meant going to bed with them in the end of the day. God, though, played a trick on us and gave human beings minds of their own.

Chasing Amy delivers a lot of messages. You love whom you love, you fall for person not gender, past is in past and all that matters is in present It also shows that being a gay female [especially a pretty one] is a less sin in the eyes of society than being a gay male. [No matter what you say, it s always been more acceptable to be a lesbian than a gay male; even here in Russia last week some buttheads wanted to pass a law against homosexuality but aiming exclusively against males or sodomy or AIDS or whatever they actually meant to aim, but lesbianism just like in the Soviet years will stay legal. We still have to sit through that in the end of May. God Bless Russia.]Movie [back to the movie!] shows the attitude of minority in the minority. It actually says a lot, maybe too much for a romantic comedy, but it doesn t look like Babylon. Everything is pretty much logical and smooth.

Ahh, romantic comedy Favorite genre of yours, I bet. However it has more in it than traditional boy meets girl story. Holden McNeil [Ben Affleck] did not know trouble in his life, drew comics, hanged out with his partner in crime Banky [Jason Lee], been silly, warm and fuzzy, enjoyed his single life till he met Alyssa Jones [Joey Lauren Adams], an indie comic-books artist almost from his hometown in New Jersey, and immediately got attracted to her. He probably would not know trouble after that moment as well and Kevin Smith would not make the film out of this, had Alyssa not been a lesbian. She aims for friendship and our Romeo chooses to be friends with her to spend time with the one he loves.

Banky is pretty much frustrated with this friendship. According to Hooper [Dwight Ewell], a black gay male friend of Holden s, Banky s homophobia is the result of his own hidden sexual orientation and love for Holden. As a side note, a couple of years ago I hanged out with this gay rights youth who honestly confronted every homophobe with the same point [naturally, no Holden involved]. But the guy simple doesn t get it why his so-in-love friend wastes his time on a dyke .

At some moment Holden manages to work everything out in his life. He tells Alyssa that he loves her, she changes her sexual preference [boy, how I hate that term] and life is beautiful. Now Banky doesn t buy the change in his friend s romantic interest. Accidentally or so we made to believe, he learns about Alyssa s past and it turns out that a girl was quite sexually experimental in her high school years. That bothers Holden more than Alyssa s lesbian past, more than the fact that she slept with half of the women in New York, more than her present, more than her.

Funny and thoughtful, it is one of the favorite movies both in GLBT and straight communities. It s filled with Kevin Smith s signature dialogues, signature characters [Jay and silent Bob] and signature actors [Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in one episode]. But more than that, it is Smith s personal story, almost real-life story but with no lesbian included.

However, I have to warn sensitive types, this movie contains a lot of profanity, words like sh*t, f*ck, f*ggot, d*ke, etc. That is all part of Kevin Smith s signature package, err, well, you know what I mean.

Romantic comedy about tricks of love, drama about attitudes and stereotypes about gays, about troubles in relationships, about weight of past and present is surely a scream. It s rated R, I would not sophisticate the fate and would not let the teens watch it, no matter how appealing it might be. Gays excluded, we are ready for anything.