Hey folks, Harry here with the trailer for KISSING JESSICA STEIN, a film that we first started tracking after Anton Sirius' review during the Toronto Film Festival. He really really seemed to like it quite a bit, and frankly it sounds like a fun lite romantic comedy. There is a potential here for the film to be dealing with very strong defining behaviours concerned with self and what it is a person wants out of life, how confusing it can all be and ultimately where that perfect person is... male/female whatever. I very much am looking forward to seeing this one. Here's Anton's review, the trailer comes afterwards...
Kissing Jessica Stein (2001, directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld)
It's about time we got a good new romantic comedy.
Kissing Jessica Stein is a nice, charming, slightly sexy tale of girl meets girl. Jessica is a neurotic editor in Manhattan working for her ex-boyfriend (Scott Cohen, better known as Max Medina on Gilmore Girls), with an extremely Jewish mother and a train wreck of a dating history that includes (gasp) Jim J. Bullock. Cross-town, Helen is a gallery manager who's gotten bored with everything on three legs and decides quite arbitrarily to work the other side of the street. Armed with a Rilke quote supplied by her gay co-workers, Helen places a 'Women Seeking Women' personals ad; on a desperate whim, Jessica answers it.
Welcome to dating, post-post-post-something or other style.
Obviously a film like this lives or dies on the charisma between its leads (see: Sweethearts, American) and Helen and Jessica have it in spades. Both are smart and sexy, if complete opposites, with Helen slowly drawing Jessica further and further down paths that dare not speak their name, but neither of them really having a clue what they're doing. They're a cute couple.
They're also a very funny couple, with Jessica's micromanaging of the burgeoning relationship being a particular stand-out. The supporting cast is also spot-on, providing half a dozen memorable lines, including one about blowjobs that falls squarely into the 'funny because its true' category. Although superficially similar, the film neatly avoids all the traps Sex and the City now finds itself entangled in, not telegraphing where its going and never presuming to judge anybody. It's all good, clean, gender-bending, taboo-breaking fun.
Sadly, given that it's set in Manhattan, the film is already dated, with plenty of shots of the skyline behind Jessica as she jogs through the park. Whether that affects its release schedule I have no idea. Hopefully not- this will be exactly the antidote to whatever frothy trifle La Julia has coming up.
