'Dating Amber' Review
NR
Runtime: 1 Hr and 32 Minutes
Production Companies: VOO, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BE TV, Atomic 80, Altitude Film Entertainment, BNP Paribas Fortis Film Fund, Screen Ireland, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Particular Crowd, Wrong Men
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Director: David Freyne
Writers: David Freyne
Cast: Fionn O'Shea, Lola Petticrew, Sharon Horgan, Barry Ward
Release Date: November 13, 2020
Closeted queer high-schoolers Eddie (Fionn O’Shea, NORMAL PEOPLE) and Amber (Lola Petticrew), hatch a perfect plan to get their bullies and families off of their backs — pretend to date each other and become each other’s beards! What follows is a funny, moving, and soul-searching film about grappling with their newfound sexualityin today’s homophobic society. Featuring familiar faces such as Sharon Horgan (CATASTROPHE), this tale of queer kinship features wonderful scenes of visual comedy, brilliant costume design, and an outcast friendship dynamic reminiscent of THE END OF THE F**KING WORLD. DATING AMBER successfully shows that while fleeting romantic love is nice, the deep power of friendship is what truly transforms us most of all.
Lately, there has been a good variety of LGBT coming-of-age teen comedies with quirky shells centered around closeted gay kids coming into their own and out of their closets. Wait, no. That was just Love, Simon. Sorry, I thought there were more. In response to this lack of representation, along comes Dating Amber, a better, Irish answer. Think Love, Simon mixed with Easy A, but completely Irish. Set in the mid-90s, Eddie and Amber are the only few closeted queer kids in school, who are suspected to be queer by their entire student body. The cold, reclusive Amber couldn’t care less. Meanwhile, Eddie’s world is shrouded in masculinity, and he would rather be caught dead instead of coming out to his peers. Even when he’s pressured to act straight, he fails to convince his peers of his heterosexuality. So in order to achieve their own peace of mind, Amber and Eddie agree to pretend to date each other, or, be each other's “beards,”, until the end of the year.
Writer/director David Freyne’s Dating Amber establishes a quirky yet aggressively heteronormative world through background visual gags, while Eddie and Amber’s platonic friendship blossom in the foreground. It’s admirable how he follows the plot structure of a romantic comedy, hitting all the beats but focussing on a budding friendship instead. The plotting of their friendship at times might be generic, especially looking at it from a teen coming-of-age angle, but damn it’s charming!
As Freyne goes into the character’s personal lives and what they’re personally dealing with back home, the audience finds that they’re not that different from one another. Eddie has to deal with his family who are on the brink of divorce. His father is a well respected military man who is training him to follow his footsteps, even though he’s barely around. Meanwhile, Amber is still processing the grief of losing her father, which harbors her relationship with her mother. s the two hang out with each other, becoming close friends, they find a refreshing breath of freedom from all of their troubles. The film’s emotional anchor is their friendship, and it’s easy to become emotionally invested.
This is the first performance I’m seeing from actors Fionn O'Shea and Lola Petticrew and they both deliver great work as newcomers. Petticrew as Amber has a spunky feistiness and just exudes pure cool. She is the suave gay best friend, who’s smart, progressive, knows what’s best for you more than you know for yourself. By the end, you wish you had a friend like her. O’ Shea, who is primary focus of the narrative, does a great job depicting the frustration that comes with internalized pressure and self-hatred. The show’s central theme about self-acceptance is something his character has a major conflict with. While I do have issues with Eddie as a character (which I will get into), Finn O’ Shea’s performance is impressive. The chemistry between him and Petticrew is so strong that you wouldn’t mind hanging out with them…well, mostly Amber because Eddie? Eddie is an asshole.I understand his pain, but goddamn I ended up truly loathing this character by the midpoint.
During the film’s first quarter, Freyne’s world is super aggressively quirky. It presents a light and overbearing tone that feels very in your face for the sake of humor. It does work for the first half, but as the film hits its second act, the pendulum swing shifts as the humor becomes less visual and more dialogue based. During this, the aggressive heterosexual pressure around Amber and Eddie eases up. The heavily masculine world isn’t as in your face as it was before. It’s intended to display the pressure Eddie faces to become what his society perceives as a “man.” But as the masculine undertones back off, Eddie’s attitude changes for the worst. During the latter half of the film, Eddie becomes an utterly toxic asshole and this insane shift comes out of completely nowhere. We find that nobody at home is enforcing masculinity on him at all. There is a scene where his dad has an emotional breakdown and cries in front of him. His hetero peers quit berating him. He’s finding a newfound joy with a best friend where he feels safe to be around with. AND YET, the boy just shifts on a dime to become a total asshole.
Without any gradual buildup, he turns into a detestable character because he creates conflict for himself when at face value there’s no conflict surrounding him at all. I understand this reaction is through an internalized self hatred for himself, but once you get a clear picture of what Eddie is dealing with in his life (especially with his family), he doesn’t have any real conflict. The film creates a huge faux drama in order to enact a string of derivative teen comedy tropes that feels completely off course. This is especially seen in how he treats Amber when she begins to accept herself. Arguably, she has more of an urgent conflict with richer emotional stakes than Eddie. Eddie has a loving family and Amber….doesn’t. At a certain point, you’re able to predict the complete route for the course of the film and it ends with an unsatisfactory finale. What should have become of Eddie’s arc is instead a sharp left turn that leaves a bad taste in your mouth-trying to pinpoint the root of his behavioral change becomes such a frustrating challenge. It truly ruined the enjoyment of the film for me despite the good humor and great performances. Dating Amber is a decent coming-of-age teen dramedy film that hopes to be a pleasant entry in a field that needs more visibility, but is way too heavily flawed in a character development area that it drags down the weight of the film itself.
