“Chasing Summer” may be the movie that cements filmmaker Josephine Decker’s status as an auteur in the original sense of the word. She’s not a brand name with a set of aesthetics that the average film fan can identify in a social media post. Instead, her artistic fingerprints are present all over a film that originated from somewhere other than her own mind.
Decker is not contorting a personal project from comedian Iliza Shlesinger into the avant-garde stylings of her earlier films or even the assured formalism of indie breakouts like “Madeline’s Madeline” and “Shirley.” She’s applying her artistry to a character’s coming-of-middle-age story. Her signature comes through clearly, accentuating the essence of Shlesinger’s idea without overpowering the writer’s voice. The collaboration gives a fascinating, unexpected charge to material that might otherwise play as formulaic froth.
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Shlesinger draws from her own memories and experiences growing up in the Dallas suburbs to bottle up the millennial midlife crisis. She stars as Jamie, a hypercompetent disaster relief professional who soon has to deal with a calamity closer to home upon the simultaneous loss of her job and boyfriend. With few other options, she returns to her Texan roots to reground herself before the next move. That means moving back in with her opinionated mother (Megan Mullaly), as well as working for her once-troubled sister (Cassidy Freeman) at a rundown roller rink.
This setup might seem like the beginning of a Hallmark movie where the career woman has to come back to “real America” to learn what really matters. But the defiant, deliberate Shlesinger refuses to let “Chasing Summer” fall into any expected patterns. The narrative vacillates just as the always plainspoken and newly free-spirited Jamie does. She will posture as a mature elder to her young adult colleague (Lola Tung) one moment, then stammer in front of her high school nemeses the next.
Rather than simply capturing these scenes for narrative and visual clarity, Decker finds tools to express Jamie’s emotions through the filmic language. It would be easy to grade “Chasing Summer” on a curve simply because of the blandness of streaming slop that has taken over comedy features. But from the opening scene’s extended, character-driven oner, it’s obvious that cinematographer Eric Branco and Decker intend to shake up the genre’s usual grammar.
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“Chasing Summer” abandons the bright, soft lighting that has become standard practice to capture the colors and temperatures of a Southern summer. The piercing sun of a long day bears down on the characters, but it also gives way to the shadows of dusk, where there’s space for Jamie to shy away from being so visible.
It’s at a late-night function among townies more than a decade her junior where Jamie encounters the strapping young Colby. Garrett Wareing, the actor who plays this instant love interest, represents a major find for the film. With a combination of Texas-fried matinee idol charm and an overwhelming sincerity of spirit, his is a face that could launch a thousand rom-coms. But just kickstarting a single summer fling here does plenty.
Before Colby’s entry in “Chasing Summer,” Shlesinger’s film most closely resembles a defanged version of Diablo Cody’s “Young Adult,” in which the specter of her teenage self dogs an embittered protagonist. His emergence as a major character opens the film’s visual language to capture the protagonist’s reconnection with the giddiness of pure pleasure. Accordingly, Jamie and Colby’s sex scenes carry an electric charge because Decker stays so attuned to the sensuality of their body language.
The film never belabors their age gap or belittles their quick connection, although their immediate spark is not enough to burn down Jamie’s other inhibitions. The character still carries a lot of baggage around her former flame, Chase (Tom Welling in an ingenious bit of early-aughts hunk stunt casting). Shlesinger’s script might have benefited from some streamlining of the intricate rumors and lore, which stand out as a bit belabored compared to the more archetypal supporting characters.
All’s well that ends well, however, and “Chasing Summer” earns a lot of goodwill with a rowdy climax that plays into Shlesinger’s strengths as a humorist. The big moment she builds toward plays like gangbusters. Decker, to her credit, lets it play as a big studio comedy would to get the big laugh. (A little more falling action might have helped afterwards, too, as the film ends quite abruptly after hitting this high point.)
But as Decker guides the scene, an interesting sound begins to emerge underneath the rapid-fire dialogue exchange: Jon Brion’s “He Really Needs Me” from the score of “Punch-Drunk Love.” Fans of Paul Thomas Anderson’s quirky romance will remember that the track itself interpolates Shelley Duvall’s “He Needs Me” from “Popeye.” Decker makes a reference inside of a reference, and one that might not register for many in the audience.
“When you steal a song from a twenty-two-year-old movie, you also steal all the tenderness the movie’s viewers have accrued since it came out,” wrote Miranda July of Anderson’s original sonic homage. “An open theft is joyful; it implies that these two men, Altman and Anderson, were so confident, they could share a song.” Decker’s bold insertion of herself into any narrative – be it Shlesinger’s, Anderson’s, or Altman’s – is a joyous thing to behold indeed. [B+]
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