|
KISSING JESSICA STEIN Send This Review to a Friend
It's lesbian romantic comedy time, and while there's plenty that's bright, amusing and different, "Kissing Jessica Stein" also has a case of the cutes that sometimes makes the behavior of these lovers look as prissy as the wooing in the old Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies. The film, is an outgrowth of an off-off-Broadway play titled "Lipschtick," co-written by Heather Juergensen and Jennifer Westfeldt, who have not only done the screen adaptation, but co-star as the women who fall for each other.
Westfeldt plays Jessica, who proofreads at a magazine in New York and is fed up with the dating scene, which is amusingly revealed in a montage of the creeps she takes turns with. A nervous mess, she's no bargain herself. One day she is intrigued by the ad of a romance seeker--a woman. She gets the urge to respond just for the hell of it. When she nervously meets Helen, a downtown art gallery manager played by Juergensen, chemistry starts to kick in and a relationship develops.
But even though Jessica makes up her mind to go all the way, the film becomes insufferably cute as she must ease into it little by little, date one, date two etc. You want to shout, "Do it already!" Inevitably the secrecy Jessica tries to maintain at work and at home causes problems. How can she invite Helen to her brother's wedding? Jessica has an overbearing Jewish mother (Tovah Feldshuh), who keeps pushing her to find a nice guy. It is hardly believable when mom, on realizing Jessica's lover is a she, quickly converts to easy acceptance.
The film, however, means well, and there are some funny scenes when Helen finally is is on display and when Jessica owns up to her affair. But there are also questionable aspects that some might find insulting or just plain wrong. Lesbianism is treated here merely as a lifestyle choice. Jessica could just as well be heterosexual if only she had met the right guy.
However, sex isn't the only aspect involved. The film is also about bonding between women, with friendship as key an ingredient as love. Director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld concentrates well on all of the elements and, in the spirit of the screenplay, makes the film at times as much of a screwball comedy as a romantic one, abetted by amusing character acting and funny set-ups. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.
|