“Chasing Amy,” written and directed by Kevin Smith. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated R (strong language, sexuality and drug content). Playing at 8:50 p.m. June 17-19 at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

In the romantic comedy “Chasing Amy,” Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), a Generation X cartoonist, has fallen in love. Charming, handsome and likable, Holden swoons after meeting fellow cartoonist Alyssa Jones (Joey Laren Adams) at a comic book convention where both are signing copies of their respective cult rags for an enthusiastic line of overweight, pimply boys. If you can get past Alyssa’s Betty-Boop-on-helium voice, she is, at first glance, every bit the girl next door. Her smile — wide as the map of America — is enchanting, if not a little too sugary sweet. Still, she does it for Holden, and that would be great for him if Alyssa wasn’t a card-carrying lesbian.

Written and directed by Kevin Smith, who brought us the wonderful, low-budget “Clerks” and the anemic disaster “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” is a solid final installment in his Jersey trilogy. This being the era of Lesbian Chic, “Chasing Amy” is timely and trendy, if not exactly fresh. There were moments when I half expected Ellen DeGeneres to swing triumphantly out of closet doors with k.d. lang hanging on her arm, if only to extend her long and exhausting coming out.

Smith is a nuts-and-bolts director more concerned with character development than with camera angle. As a writer he excels at creating believable dialogue that is delivered with the rapid-fire intensity of a pit bull brandishing an AK-47. He knows there is nothing funny about falling in love, and he takes Holden’s feelings seriously. Holden is in love with Alyssa’s wit, her personality, her wonderful laugh, the special way she looks at him — her whole being. He is desperate. She is a lesbian who happens to be everything he wants in a woman, and they have become fast friends. But how can he tell her that he’s in love with her without pushing her away? Somehow he finds the courage, and the result is the film’s best, most heartfelt moment.

But Smith isn’t content with ending the film there; that would be too easy. He complicates the situation with Banky (Jason Lee), Holden’s comic book partner, best friend and roommate. From the start, Banky is against Holden seeing Alyssa. Scene after scene, he confronts Holden, telling him in jealous rages that he’s wasting his time, this woman is a lesbian. Holden must get over her. When Holden doesn’t listen and his relationship with Alyssa turns sexual, Banky, who is possibly in love with Holden and is desperate himself, digs into Alyssa’s sexual past and uncovers information that nearly destroys his best friend’s relationship.

Smith, in his role as Silent Bob, the character he’s played in his previous two films, explains who Amy was, why she was being chased, and how this explains why Holden is chasing Alyssa.

“Chasing Amy” falters at its contrived ending, which is silly and unnecessary, but there are moments in this movie that had the audience howling. Hooper (Dwight Ewell), a gay black militant cartoonist, gets some of the biggest laughs and steals every scene he’s in. If you are not put off by the strong language, see this movie for the strong performances.

Grade: B.

Video of the Week

“Secrets and Lies,” written and directed by Mike Leigh. Running time: 144 minutes. Rated R (for language).

Near the end of Mike Leigh’s heartbreaking latest film, Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) says to her newly found birth mother, Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn), that it’s “best to tell the truth — that way nobody gets hurt.” Simple wisdom, but how many families could heed this advice? Leigh knows that many could, that secrets and lies accumulate in all families, and that coming to terms with who we are and the mistakes we’ve made takes enormous courage. Cynthia Rose — timid, nervous, painfully desperate and insecure — somehow summons that courage, and the “awful” truth that once threatened her fragile life becomes by film’s end her saving grace. “Secrets and Lies” is so much more than a film about an adopted black woman who seeks out her natural birth mother, discovers she’s white and arranges to meet her. This wonderful British film is about a dysfunctional, working-class family almost torn apart by a series of sudden truths … only to be mended by them.

Grade: A.

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, will review films each Monday in the NEWS.