Amy Chan picks 4 movies to pair with ‘Unsingle’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Amy Chan is the founder of Breakup Bootcamp and Dating Bootcamp, where she helps singles date smarter. She also teaches at Esalen Institute and The Omega Institute. Her new book Unsingle: How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts is available on April 28 wherever you get your books!
We asked Amy to pick a few movies that pair well with Unsingle. Here’s what she wrote about them.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
This movie is the epitome of what I call the “chemistry compass” in my book Unsingle. Your chemistry compass is your internal guide for attraction, and when it’s broken, it keeps pointing you toward what feels familiar rather than what’s actually healthy. Joel and Clementine keep gravitating toward each other, even after literally erasing their memories, because the pull isn’t really about the other person. It’s about their own unresolved patterns. The movie asks whether you’d choose the same person all over again.
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Tom spends the entire movie in love with a version of Summer that doesn’t exist. He projects a fantasy onto her from date one and then is devastated when reality doesn’t match. This is the single biggest mistake I see people make in the Evaluation stage of the Dating Funnel: falling for the representative instead of looking at the data and reality. Unsingle is basically the dating guide Tom needed before he ever walked into that IKEA.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
This movie gets something right that most rom-coms fumble: you don’t find love by being polished and ready. You find it by doing the messy, uncomfortable work on yourself first. Pat’s journey from breakdown to breakthrough mirrors what I’ve seen with thousands of people at Breakup Bootcamp. And the fact that Tiffany wasn’t his “type” but was exactly who he needed? That’s the chemistry compass recalibrating in real time.
The Tinder Swindler (2022)
I have my own Seth chapter in Unsingle, a man who wined and dined me at the Baccarat Hotel, talked about our future penthouse, and then later on, once he gained my trust, asked me for $10,000. I would later find out he was a con artist. Watching The Tinder Swindler, I recognized every move: the love bombing, the manufactured urgency, the way charm can override your gut instincts. My book doesn’t just warn you about people like this. It teaches you how to become the kind of person they can’t con.