Just A Kiss
Rental
Just a Kiss is an odd little ensemble dramedy about sexuality, infidelity, and the intricate weavings of interpersonal relationships. This makes it sound far more heady than it is. Despite its medium budget appearance (judging by the cast) and indy art film cred (judging by the filmmaking), Just A Kiss is a nice little bit of work. Written by and co-starring Patrick Breen (as Peter, the guy from the hawk commercials), whom you might recall as Alan Rickman's character's protégé in Galaxy Quest, it's a small film with a big heart, and maybe too many ideas for one film.
Dag and Hallie (Ron Eldard and Kyra Sedgwick) are in a relationship, but Ron and his best friend's girl Rebecca (played by Marley Shelton) had, well, just a kiss. This one kiss ends up spiraling into chaos and in some cases, destruction, not only the lives of these three people, but also a surprising number of other people. The cast is great - Taye Diggs and Marisa Tomei and the aforementioned Breen. Not people you would think of being in the same movie together, but a nice ensemble nonetheless.
The film is given an R for strong sexual images and language, but really the primary focus is talking. You have to appreciate how much can be implied by this script. My favorite scene is a dance rehearsal, chaste but prophetic and charged. Rebecca's character has the worst lines, as if her dialogue was provided by a beginning screenwriting student and stuck into a more polished script, and maybe that's a character choice, but it does drag at the film. She herself is a beautiful, bland sociopath whose naivete wreaks incredible destuction. It's an interesting character, only marred by her stinky dialogue. Everyone else talks fine. It's not a Wildean witfest or a sea of potty humor, it's mostly naturalistic dialogue in absurdly exaggerated circumstances. Their forwardness is right out of 1970's soft core.
Directed by Fischer Stevens, some of the elements of the film itself also come off a little stumbly - there are some focus issues and confusing time jumps that keep you detached from the story while you try to work it out, rather than flowing neatly and keeping you engaged. The actors all do a great job reeling you back, but they shouldn't have had to. He also uses a little technology call rotomation. If you didn't see Waking Life (don't) you have seen a little of this in that Toyota Matrix commerical, where the cityscape and car look like they are painted over the real film, the paint peels back, etc. etc. That's rotomation.
While I really detested Waking Life, the rotomation was the one interesting part. That entire film was "animated" in this way. Just A Kiss uses it selectively, but sometimes too randomly, diffusing its expressive capabilities. City scenes, random items jump in and out of rotomation, odd, sometimes with emotionally charged things, sometimes not. This also detached me from the story. People's personality quirks go largely unexplained, which also leaves you feeling a little lost. And think of all the cooties!
Oddly, right when the film gets really morbid is right when it really gets funny. Too little too late? An odd prologue which feels like it was tacked on by a test audience does finally pay off to a nice, circular, even reasonable end. Taye and Kyra and Patrick do the best job selling their parts on screen - they seem the most assured and comfortable. It's cute.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. reviews@cinerina.com Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com and http://www.capitol-city.com
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