Positive or negative, a reaction is almost inevitable as your eyes scan the words, "Chase the Slut." Ticket sold, bottom on a seat, attention-grab has to extend quickly to prove you're not just dumb and without taste. Fortunately it does.
A comic church congregation, with furry rodents among the faithful, segues back and forth with desaturated scenes of funky fishnets. Preacher and parrot, versus groping hands and the smell of sex. This might be the point to release your inner teenager. Tibby the pretty rich girl and her red-hot pal are funky, intelligent, wild and wanton young women. Virgin boys, including good 17-year old Gabe (and his brothers of similarly chaste persuasion) are members of the Disciples of Noah. They each have a pet animal, regarded as an extension of their soul. The lads get engaged to untouched ladies through a mating ritual in which each young woman offers a dog bowl of food and waits to see whose animal 'picks' her. Yeah, right! So who, exactly, is doing the 'chasing'?
My philosophical meanderings on this are suddenly grounded as I realise 'Chase' is just the name of Tibby's penniless best buddy. She happens to need $1500 to fix her car. (I am almost disappointed – where is the inverted game of men just 'thinking' they do the chasing - when really it's the other way round?) Tibby bribes Chase, daring her to bed unbeddable young Gabe, and offering a bounty that will pay Chase's car bills.
The merciless lampooning of Noah's disciples is edgy and darkly humorous. Gabe's self-righteous, overbearing mother, for instance, will add booze to her milk then secretly nip to the bathroom for a spot of self-harm. In the parallel world of Chase and Tibby, we are treated to fast, witty and intelligent teen banter. The entertainment factor is looking good. It could all go Pink Flamingos, if not quite as subversive as Andy Warhol's Heat or the outrageous Thundercrack! A pleasantly retro soundtrack (that reminds me of early B52s) reassures me that this film was the right choice after all.
Chase infiltrates the god-guys' camp and surprises Gabe on a male-bonding session. Male disciples are macho-bonding by beating up garbage bins. Vanessa Claire Smith (Chase), who also scripted the movie, does an excellent job of moving through three levels of performance. Her initial persona is iconic, almost a comic strip character. Then she starts to seduce Gabe, and we become aware of two sides of her. The promiscuous tomboy we already know, but also the skillful way in which she lures her man without seeming to do so. Most expressions of this are formulaic at best, and I was very impressed with the careful dialogue and sharp delivery (Juno meets Deathproof?). Later still, we will see the 'real' Chase, with her heart firmly on her sleeve.
As we get to know Chase, we find she is 22 years old, has a degree, underachieves, and writes fairy tales. There is just enough material here to let the mind wander and ask, is romance itself perhaps the 'mental storybook' that allows us to envisage more lasting relationships? Moments of sincerity and passion, convincingly injected by Smith, take our story to another level of seriousness. We can even imagine how she could be emblematic of many young women, especially those with a wild and independent nature (think, gorgeous university students, boozed up on the town at the weekends).
Seventeen year old Gabe on the other hand, lives in a state of altered reality. His character is more one-dimensional: an extra weird version of more extreme American 'born-agains.' With so much going for it, it's regrettable that so much goes wrong (although mainstream viewers might not notice or care, and they may well be the target audience with which to fund the next movie). The film's blurb says, "The last thing everyone expects: Chase the slut falls in love." Wow. Except we do expect it. This is the far too-obvious plot-development that had to be avoided. Rebellion turns to convention, divesting the film of its early counter-culture promises.
Chase the Slut is a typical fun film-festival movie: low budget, brimming with talent, and almost assured of at least a small select theatre run. It's both gutsier and more maudlin than similarly budgeted breakthrough films on oddball dating. Such as (the successful) In Search of a Midnight Kiss, which I could forgive for selling out to mainstream; or the less successful, Good Dick, which I couldn't. (Perhaps romantic titles work better than ones that seem vulgar?) The regrettable subtext is lamentably mainstream, but I enjoyed the first half so much that criticising it heavily would be uncharitable.
With a dose of David Lynch or John Waters to keep the film on track, it could have been a cult classic, rather than forgettable in a year or two. It's still a great film, but there were times at which I yearned, in Chase's words, ". . . for something a bit more grown up."
