This premise was criticized at the time: just a few years later in her cultural history of gay visibility<\/a>, Suzanna Danuta Walters called Chasing Amy<\/em> \u201cexplicitly a boy\u2019s fantasy about girls who like girls.\u201d But the mists of time have given that critique new teeth. That\u2019s partly because mainstream understanding of the LGBT community has galloped ahead in those twenty-five years, and partly because it\u2019s an easy film to dunk on based on hazy memories of seeing it once. On Last Week Tonight<\/em>, John Oliver said that \u201cactually watching\u201d Chasing Amy<\/em><\/a> bursts any nostalgia for 1990s indie movies: \u201cSet aside the notion that any lesbian could be magically turned straight if the right guy comes along. What\u2019s extra offensive in hindsight is the idea that guy would be Ben Affleck.\u201d Who, I guess, is a notorious uggo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But if you do<\/em> sit and watch Chasing Amy<\/em>, that\u2019s not what it\u2019s like at all. It\u2019s a genuinely affecting rom-com about characters navigating different roads through sexual identity \u2013 none of whom are straight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Holden is a comic book artist who, with his best friend, roommate, and inker Banky (Jason Lee), makes Bluntman and Chronic<\/em>: depending on who you ask, it\u2019s like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet Vladimir and Estragon, or like Bill and Ted meet Cheech and Chong. He meets fellow comics artist Alyssa at a convention. Holden is instantly smitten; Banky is instantly annoyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This becomes their holding pattern. Holden hangs out with Alyssa all the time: bitching about finding Bluntman and Chronic<\/em> creatively unsatisfying and asking ignorant questions about lesbianism and, occasionally, being cute, witty, and charming. Banky resents Alyssa and her friendship with Holden. He ups his already generous quota of homophobic slurs to yell at Holden about how he needs to stop spending all this time with her. In these early scenes of the film, Holden\u2019s the ally and Banky\u2019s the bigot. Holden tells Banky to stop using the f-slur; Banky screams about how lesbians are man-hating. Which Way, Heterosexual Man? But the rest of the film slowly peels that back, revealing something richer and thornier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Holden and Alyssa sleep together, she tells him that he\u2019s the only man she\u2019s ever been with. He finds out that isn\u2019t true from Banky\u2019s yearbook sleuthing \u2013 that she slept with two guys at once in high school \u2013 and it eats him up inside in a way that Alyssa sleeping with, by her count, \u201chalf the women in New York\u201d doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s a concern for sexual purity rooted clearly in a belief that what lesbians do isn\u2019t \u201creal\u201d sex: before they got together, he said she was still a virgin because she hadn\u2019t been \u201cphysically penetrated.\u201d Biphobia, slut-shaming and masculine insecurity pushes them apart. She tells him that saying he was the only man she\u2019d ever been with lit him up in a way her saying how special he was couldn\u2019t seem to. If their union plays like a boy\u2019s fantasy of \u201cturning\u201d a lesbian, the truth looks like a bisexual woman knowing appealing to that fantasy is a lot easier than being understood for who you are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Simultaneously, it\u2019s made clearer and clearer that Banky is in love with Holden. Jason Lee, never better, delivers Banky\u2019s homophobia and misogyny so viciously that it\u2019s incredible he remains sympathetic. His closetedness contextualises his bigotry \u2013 the kind of closeted that everyone can see but him. Banky\u2019s homophobia is self-hatred. His dislike of Alyssa is jealousy. \u201cDon\u2019t kid yourself,\u201d Hooper (Dwight Ewell) tells Holden, \u201cThat boy loves you in a way that he’s not ready to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when everything is falling apart, Holden presents a solution. He sets a table for three, pulls up a chair in front of Banky and Alyssa, and says they need to have a threesome. He presents it as beautiful resolution to every issue between the three of them: he won\u2019t feel inadequate next to Alyssa\u2019s sexual experience, Banky can \u201ctake that leap\u201d that everyone sees he should take, with his best friend and with the reassuring presence of a woman, and all the tension and resentment between the three of them will dissolve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Banky takes a deep, shaky breath, and says, \u201cSure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alyssa gives a big, teary speech about why it\u2019s a stupid idea \u2013 about how gross it is for Holden to assume that because she\u2019s had a threesome before she would naturally be happy to have this<\/em> threesome now<\/em> \u2013 then slaps Holden and tells him where to go. \u201cHe\u2019s yours again,\u201d she says to Banky on her way out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy agenda is to watch your back,\u201d Banky tells Holden the morning after he first sleeps with Alyssa, \u201cTo ensure that all this time we’ve spent together, building something, wasn’t wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe’s not going to ruin the comic,\u201d Holden replies easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wasn’t talking about the comic,\u201d Banky says. It\u2019s obvious here \u2013 more obvious, even, than it is later when Holden smacks a kiss on Banky\u2019s lips and talks about how they\u2019ve \u201cbeen everything to each other but intimates, and now, we’ll have been through that together too\u201d \u2013 that this was never a movie about two straight guys and a lesbian. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/chasing-amy-1-1024x576.jpg\")
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