Written and Directed by David Freyne
Starring Fionn O’Shea, Lola Petticrew, Sharon Horgan and Barry Ward
Running Time: 1 Hour and 32 Minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

by Ian Hrabe

Few things seem more futile than conservative society’s war on homosexuality. Out of all the social issues that voting bloc rails against, the fight to prevent LGBTQ folks from having the same rights as everyone else feels like the most pathetic, and it’s one we can visibly see eroding. I worked as a teen services librarian for four years and one of the most eye-opening things about that job was how smart today’s teens are. Yes, the internet is a double edged sword but, one positive is that kids today are a lot more plugged-in to issues than I ever was when I was 13. These kids had openly out friends and classmates and it genuinely was not a big deal. That’s anecdotal evidence, but studies show attitudes toward same-sex marriage are changing no matter how many draconian bigots America installs on its Supreme Court. The upshot here is that there is a dearth of young adult literature and cinema that tell LGBTQ stories beyond the “gay best friend” trope. 

It feels like every year we get one of these great queer teen cinema films. In 2018 we got Love, Simon, in 2019 we got Booksmart, and in 2020 we get the Irish film Dating Amber. Set in mid-90s, small town Ireland, the story involves two closeted teens—Eddie (Fionn O’Shea) and Amber (Lola Petticrew)—becoming a sham couple to get their bigoted schoolmates off of their backs. Dating Amber’s great success is that it mines some pretty heavy subject matter with a deftly comedic touch. And yet, while there is a wonderful lightness to this film, it doesn’t shy away from the heartbreaking realities of being a gay kid in a conservative country in the 90s. 

Eddie and Amber are both reluctant to admit that they are gay to anyone other than each other, and in Eddie’s case he won’t even say it to Amber, even when they sneak off to Dublin and wander into a gay bar and both have a life-changing experience as to what it would be like if they accepted who they were. Amber embraces her sexuality easily, whereas Eddie asks Amber if it wouldn’t be better if they just got married to keep up appearances and make things much easier on themselves. Amber scoffs at this, as her dream is to move to London and open an anarchist bookshop, and is in the process of feeling out her first real relationship with another woman. This breaks Eddie’s heart, and that scene breaks your heart because Fionn O’Shea so perfectly sells how absolutely hopeless it must have felt to live in a society that fundamentally refuses to accept you. Despite the strides made toward expanding gay rights in the past quarter century, it’s hard to imagine that there aren’t kids who are still afraid to come out. Whether it’s their religion, their parents, the town they live in, we still live in a world where homosexuality is far from being normalized. So it’s important that we have films like Dating Amber that can illustrate how backwards it is to force people to pretend to be something they aren’t, and how moronic it is to pretend that homosexuality is a choice.

Speaking as a straight white dude, I can’t exactly relate to what it must feel like to be a gay kid afraid of coming out, and yet I felt like Dating Amber encapsulated that feeling and delivered it in such a way that any audience can sympathize with these characters (thanks in no small part to O’Shea and Petticrew, who are both outstanding and have impossibly bright futures ahead of them). It’s just such a sweet, heartfelt film that feels drawn from writer/director David Freyne’s own coming of age. This isn’t a “message movie,” where the social issue at hand overrides the storytelling. Honestly, all of the coming out stuff is second to the friendship between Eddie and Amber, and how they help each other navigate this messy time in their lives. It’s as universal as it is highly specific, and while those may seem like two contradictive traits, that blend makes for a damn fine film. 

Available on demand and digitally November 13.