(L-R) Josephine Decker and Iliza Shlesinger attend the “Chasing Summer” Premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at Eccles Center Theater on January 26, 2026 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
By Adam Silverstein
Chasing Summer feels, at first, like it might be a homecoming comedy you’ve seen before. It isn’t. Screening at the Eccles Theatre in the Premieres category, Josephine Decker’s latest film slides in under the guise of nostalgia and cringe, then pivots into something unexpected. Sweet, hilarious, and unsettling in all the right ways, it’s a look at the stories we tell ourselves about who we were and who we still might be.
The setup is deceptively simple. Jamie (Iliza Shlesinger), newly unemployed and freshly dumped, heads back to her small Texas hometown with her tail between her legs. It’s the kind of return that feels temporary until it isn’t. Old houses haven’t changed, old rumors have, and the emotional geography is far more treacherous than Jamie remembers. Decker, whose previous Festival films Madeline’s Madeline (2018) and Shirley (2020) thrummed with unease, brings that same instinct for interior chaos here — just filtered through a sunnier, more comic lens.
Shlesinger, who also wrote the screenplay, plays Jamie with a refreshing lack of vanity. She’s defensive, horny, spiraling, self-aware enough to know she’s spiraling, and still unable to stop. Early on, she jokes about sleeping with someone she could “technically give birth to,” which lands with the kind of laugh that’s half shock, half recognition. The audience at the Eccles is immediately on her wavelength — winces, cackles, and murmurs ripple through the room as Jamie reenters a social ecosystem she thought she’d outgrown.
That ecosystem includes Tom Welling as Chase, the ex who never quite left Jamie’s world, and a rotating cast of former classmates and friends who remember events just differently enough to destabilize her version of the past. Megan Mullally nearly steals the movie as Jamie’s aggressively involved mother, weaponizing concern with impeccable comic timing. There’s also Colby (Garrett Wareing), a younger, impossibly charming presence who enters Jamie’s life and complicates things further — his role is best left largely unspoiled, but his effect on the audience is immediate.
What keeps Chasing Summer from tipping into indulgence is Decker’s reserve. The film is funny — often laugh-out-loud funny — but it’s also attuned to the sadness underneath nostalgia. This is a movie about identity curdling when you return home, about realizing that the person you thought you escaped is still somewhere inside you. It’s about wanting “one last summer,” even when you know that kind of wanting is dangerous.
Decker opens the screening visibly moved. “You dream about this,” she says, taking in the room. “I feel blessed to be at the final Sundance in Park City. I was in a dark room for seven months for many hours a day.”
“And then she edited it,” Shlesinger jokes — before turning earnest. “We all deserve to feel good, especially now. We deserve to watch things and laugh.” She describes the film as a tribute to “millennial nostalgia,” but one that isn’t afraid to interrogate it. “I hope you’re a little turned on,” she adds, to big laughs.
During the Q&A, Shlesinger reflects on how getting married was like closing a door on certain versions of herself — and it’s that feeling that inspired her to write the film. “It would be weird if I still talked about high school crushes and mean girls,” she says. “I wanted that warmth and nostalgia in a movie.”
Many of the crew, Decker says, flew themselves out for the premiere. “We’ll get rich, though,” Shlesinger deadpans.
By the time the credits roll, Chasing Summer doesn’t wrap things up neatly, and that’s the point. It understands that nostalgia isn’t warm and fuzzy. The film lets its characters be embarrassing and unfinished. The laughs land hard, but what sticks is the recognition: You can go home, but you don’t get to control what’s waiting for you there.
