FILMMAKER SMITH FINDS HIMSELF `CHASING AMY'.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

As Alyssa Jones, Joey Lauren Adams is everything that fellow comic book artist Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) thinks he wants - frank, sexy, funny and very cute. So when she invites him to meet her at a club one night, he's already doing a dance of anticipation. Until he finds out, in the most unmistakable way, that neither she nor any other female at that place will be going home with him.

As Ellen DeGeneres might put it - yep, she's gay. But for some reason, that doesn't stop Holden and Alyssa from hanging out together, and the more they do, the more alarming their attraction becomes for them and everyone around them.

From the most button-pushing and politically incorrect starting point, writer-director Kevin Smith (``Clerks,'' ``Mallrats'') has rendered a love story that's blisteringly raw, raucously funny and surprisingly mature.

He may have made his entrance as the clever but profanity-addicted patron saint of the emotionally stunted, but since then, Smith, 26, has been growing up in a hurry, and this very personal film tells the tale in a way that's nothing short of inspiring.

It's not like Alyssa is some kind of pushover for a guy as cute as Holden. It's just that she's tough and honest enough to judge her attraction for somebody without preconceptions. It's a challenge she holds out to Holden, but when some crazy-making stories from her high school days come up, it's a challenge he proves not quite up to.

From there, Smith fashions a drama about the struggle toward honesty and connection and coming to terms with oneself that's as nervy and boundary-breaking - as well as raunchy and hilarious - as anything you're likely to see, and he does it with the kind of urgency that perfectly captures the age his characters are in.

A dazzler at working the crude vernacular of today's young strip-mall rats and video-age cynics, Smith slings so much rude and funny dialogue that he makes having a real budget to work with seem like a crutch.

``Chasing Amy'' was shot on Super-16mm for an initial in-the-can budget of $250,000, and it has a flat-lit, cheesy visual quality, but even that comes across like a comic comment on its characters' hapless predicaments and unglamorous environs.

Fearlessly blunt and relentlessly bold, Smith is doing the kind of work that might have caused a cultural sensation in an earlier, less-distracted age - and if the mainstream media did not perceive his target audience as subliterate and divorced from the cultural elite.

Regardless, he's now righting himself after the unfortunate genre exercise of ``Mallrats,'' and heading in a direction that's more promising and personal, while developing a regular troupe of players in the pattern of Woody Allen and other iconoclasts before him.

His female characters - mere footnotes in ``Clerks'' - are also way improved. The Amy of the movie's title is only a metaphor in a story told by Silent Bob (Smith himself). But Alyssa, as brought to life in a very distinct and gutsy performance by Adams, is a tough, very three-dimensional customer: the kind whose reputation invites disrespect but whose character commands the opposite - and that's a writer's trick that you have to applaud.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Chasing Amy'' (R; profanity, sexuality).

The stars: Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell, Jason Mewes.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Kevin Smith. Produced by Scott Mosier. Executive producer, John Pierson. Released by Miramax

Running time: One hour, 45 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Ben Affleck, left, and Joey Lauren Adams play an unlikely romantic couple in ``Chasing Amy,'' written and directed by Kevin Smith, who shot it for $250,000. His previous films were ``Clerks'' and ``Mallrats.''