There’s nothing worse than that dreaded feeling of returning to a hometown full of haunted high school stories, hatred, and the decaying scent of long-lost hopes and dreams. Alas, that is what Jamie (Iliza Shlesinger) faces in Josephine Decker’s Chasing Summer, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. After a sudden breakup and career change, Jamie reluctantly journeys back to her Texas hometown — a place she’s been avoiding for twenty years. Former flings and failures await her return.
Chasing Summer makes the biggest splash in its opening montage. After someone asks Jamie what she loves most about her job, footage of natural disasters is paired with suggestive moaning. This dissonance creates an eerie sense of sexual gratification from devastating tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. It paints our main character as someone whose intentions should be questioned. This scene might make you think we’re about to embark on some strange fetishistic journey, à la Titane (2021), which would have made for an interesting story. Instead, Chasing Summer drives us down the safe, well-worn route of many other coming-of-age films.
Spoilers for ‘Chasing Summer’ ahead.
Director Josephine Decker is known for her experimental filmmaking, while Iliza Shlesinger, screenwriter of Chasing Summer, is known for her stand-up comedy. Unfortunately, the two women’s specialties never quite converge to maximize their talents and create something unique. Instead, Shlesinger’s comedic writing is what propels the film, while there are only sporadic glimmers of Decker’s arthouse roots on display. For instance, as Jamie returns to her childhood bedroom, editor David Barker explains how he incorporated archival footage to “create emotional space that would allow the audience to invest in the character.” If only they had done more of this. Along with the opening sequence, these two scenes that experiment with found footage are the most captivating chunks of the film.
Falling into tired tropes, Jamie meanders around her hometown, dodging old frenemies and flings. She gets into cliché clashes with her parents, which — despite Megan Mullaley as Jamie’s mom breathing a bit of life into the film — feel trite and pregnant with missed opportunities to capitalize on two hilarious actresses. The main joke repeated between them is that Jamie’s mom can’t remember the word “Indonesia.” The screenplay severely lacks the humor one would expect from a comedian. The plot slightly picks up when Jamie faces the reason why she left her hometown so suddenly in the first place.
America’s favorite small-town hunk, Tom Welling, makes a rare return to the silver screen as Chase, Jamie’s ex-boyfriend. Now silver-haired with a thoroughly salt-and-peppered beard, Welling still looks and perfectly plays the part of hometown hero. During the summer after graduation, a false rumor spread that Jamie was trying to trap Chase into their relationship by getting pregnant. This is why Jamie fled town and never returned, a fact that the screenplay weirdly keeps secret for far too long — to the point that the reveal that it was in fact another girl who became pregnant by Chase feels almost inconsequential.
Again, never quite finding its pacing, the actual jaw-dropping reveal in Chasing Summer comes too late in the game to pack a punch. With only fifteen minutes left in the film, there’s a shocking twist that somehow feels ill-fitting. Jamie had rekindled her old flame with Chase while simultaneously unknowingly sleeping with his son, Colby (Garrett Wareing), who brings refreshing on-screen chemistry with Shlesinger. This creates a true family dilemma. I guess Jamie has a type! It could have been a fascinating dilemma if only the viewer had been let in on it sooner.
Despite falling into the same narrative trappings of many coming-of-age films, there are moments when Chasing Summer feels fresh. It just never fully forms. The film can’t figure out what it wants to be. For viewers who already love the hot-mess persona of Shlesinger’s standup comedy, Chasing Summer could be a fun 90-minute watch. For fans of Josephine Decker, many might leave feeling somewhat disappointed, chasing a different kind of film altogether.
Review Courtesy of Kasey Dunifer
Feature Image Courtesy of Sundance Institute