We often treat the milestones of adulthood like a series of boxes waiting to be checked, but for many, the blueprints of our lives are still drawn in the ink of our teenage years. In Chasing Summer, a collaboration between Sundance alum Josephine Decker and Iliza Shlesinger, this lingering debris is dissected with a thoughtful eye and comedic touch. While the film’s narrative can feel all over the place at times, the comedy remains exceptionally strong, grounded by Shlesinger’s natural screen presence. Crucially, Decker’s vibrant and textured direction serves as the perfect complement to Shlesinger’s writing; it is a fascinating swing for Decker, moving away from the psychosexual and experimental with works like Shirley and Madeline’s Madeline to find the profound beauty in the messiness of a late-blooming coming-of-age.
The film’s opening is an evocative sequence: random footage of climate disasters set to the sounds of a woman’s org*sm. It’s a telling introduction to Jamie (Shlesinger), an aid worker who has spent years distracting herself with global wreckage to avoid the hollow ache where her own pleasure should be. While she gathers aid amidst the aftermath of a tornado, she learns she’s been invited to Jakarta to help those affected by rising sea levels. She’s excited for this once-in-a-lifetime experience, even if she’ll be on a diet of malaria pills. Yet, there’s a moment when she looks at her 70-year-old co-worker and shudders. She is a woman haunted by the fear of being the person she is forever, stuck in a cycle of tending to everyone’s disasters but her own.
Chasing Summer Review: Sundance Film Festival
The internal storm finally makes landfall when her boyfriend, Aaron, breaks up with her. He reveals he already has a new girlfriend and has packed Jamie’s entire life into storage. Suddenly homeless and adrift for the summer, awaiting to leave for Jakarta, Jamie is forced back into the millennial time capsule of her high school bedroom in her small Texas hometown.
Homecoming is less of a sanctuary and more of a regression. Jamie’s mother (played with a perfect blend of love and critique by Megan Mullally) treats her like a teenager, laying out rules and declaring that the only disaster needing tending is Jamie’s personal life. Her family views her aid work with a dismissive shrug, taking her sister Marissa (Cassidy Freeman) more seriously because she owns the local roller rink. There is a sharp, ironic sting in seeing Jamie, once the successful one, now viewed as the washed-up sibling living in her childhood bedroom, while her former addict sister has her life together.
The film is most compelling when it explores how our teenage years follow us. Jamie is bombarded by the clicky girls from her past who offer a brand of Texas charm so thick you can’t tell if the kindness is fake or a weapon. When she is reunited with her first love, Chase (Tom Welling), now married with kids, the old wounds of cheating, rumors, and high school heartbreak resurface with a stinging freshness. Overwhelmed, Jamie begins a summer fling with a much younger boy toy, Colby (Garrett Wareing). It is here that the film occasionally loses its footing, veering into the territory of a Netflix teen comedy with a twist that feels a bit too eye-rolling for the depth of the subject matter.
However, even when the romance feels slight, the underlying theme of the summer redo remains profound. Jamie is allowing herself to be free, chasing the lightness she was robbed of twenty years ago. This summer back home becomes a necessary reframing of her life’s trajectory; a coming-of-age often reserved for those in their twenties, but perhaps more vital for those in their thirties. Shlesinger reveals a rare, nuanced vulnerability here, showing a woman who finally stops using the world’s catastrophes as a place to hide.
Chasing Summer is a celebratory, often painful stroll through the crossroads of coming home, reminding us that while we cannot change the summers we lost, we can always choose the direction we walk once the storm has passed.
Grade: B+
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Chasing Summer
After losing both her job and boyfriend, Jamie retreats to her small Texas hometown where friends and flings from a fateful high school summer turn her life upside down.
