"Chrissy Judy" - Film Review
It’s inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between Chrissy Judy and Frances Ha. Two black-and-white, contemporary, New York-set films about a friend breakup where the relationship is more than a little codependent. Only this time, it’s two drag queens trying to make a name for themselves.
Chrissy (Wyatt Fenner) and Judy (Todd Flaherty) are late-twenty-somethings living in New York City in the chaotic sort of way that’s only possible in one’s youth. They have a combo drag show that’s slowly picking up some steam and notoriety, but Chrissy isn’t cut out for this life as a starving artist. Chrissy has an on-again, off-again boyfriend, Shawn (Kiyon Spencer), who lives in Philadelphia and wants to give their relationship a real shot. Chrissy moves to Philadelphia out of the blue, which seems to devastate Judy more than Chrissy. Left alone in the city, Judy is forced to reevaluate his life and stand on his own for the first time.
Dark Star Pictures
Where Chrissy Judy deviates from Frances Ha is in the depiction of the central friendship. The relationship between Frances (Greta Gerwig) and Sophie (Mickey Sumner) is the beating heart of the film, even though they’re separated from each other fairly early on. Co-writers Gerwig and Noah Baumbach do an impeccable job of demonstrating Frances’ loneliness and heartache after being replaced in Sophie’s life by her new boyfriend (Patrick Heusinger). Sophie didn’t even move to a new city like Chrissy did, but Chrissy Judy doesn’t manage to capture the strangeness of losing a best friend in the same way. The friendship between Chrissy and Judy doesn’t have the same lived-in feeling that’s essential to the emotional gut punch of the breakup.
Dark Star Pictures
Toward the end of the film, Chrissy tells Judy that he’s one of the most self-obsessed people he knows and that Judy acts like the main character in the story. It’s a truth Judy doesn’t accept very well, but it’s likely something the audience has been thinking to themselves all along. He’s disrespectful to his roommates and puts his own needs at the forefront of the story. That’s not to say that a selfish character can’t make an interesting protagonist, but for this sort of emotion-driven movie, there must be something in the character that endears him to the audience. Judy can be a screw-up and a bumbling mess all across New York City, like so many great mumblecore characters before him, but he has to give the audience something to root for.
Where Chrissy Judy pales in comparison to Frances Ha is in its earnestness. Judy doesn’t seem to have changed by the end of it. He’s just making the best of the opportunities he has, but the audience doesn’t get the sense that he’s processed or examined the impact of Chrissy’s loss on his life. It’s one of those unfortunate movies that ends in the same place it began emotionally. While it does manage to realistically and meaningfully capture queer life in the 2020s, Chrissy Judy lacks the heart to make this friendship breakup the painful loss it deserved to be.
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