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"Kissing Jessica Stein"
is a smart romantic comedy with both an original and interesting
storyline, and with believable three-dimensional characters.
While the premise of the film that women in New York City can't find
romance because all the good men are either already married or gay
has been done countless times in other films, this film has a unique
thought provoking twist to this theme. This twist being that
can a straight woman find romance and love with another woman
instead of a man? And is it possible to have this romantic love
without displaying a physical expression of it?
The
movie starts out with us seeing Jessica, who works as a copy editor
at a newspaper, having one disastrous date after another. Then
we meet Helen, a bisexual woman who works at an art gallery, who is
having problems meeting a woman who interests her. Then, on a
lark, Jessica answers a personals ad by Helen and they meet at a
restaurant. Jessica finds it very difficult to go thru with
starting a relationship with a woman but slowly she and Helen fall
in love and move in together. That Jessica wants to keep the
relationship a secret and Helen wants to openly express their
romance to all their family, friends and co-workers ultimately
results in a crisis with their relationship. Much of the story
centers on how these two women deal with this conflicting view about
their relationship.
What could have been a cliché ridden, routine movie becomes a most
entertaining one with sparkling dialogue and many interesting
characters that you care about. The two leads, Jennifer
Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen, give very passionate and
believable performances. In fact, the film is based on the a
1997 stage play called Lipstick which these two leading actresses
collaborated in writing. The film succeeds in effectively
combining both comedy and drama, never veering too much in one
direction or another. The movie also contains marvelous views
of New York City as the story unfolds.
This is a very good movie. While the film is not an emotional
powerful one, it kept me interested throughout and had me wanting to
know what happens later in the relationship between these two women.
Many of the other characters are interesting as well, some whose personalities
become changed from what we think they are from what we see in the
beginning. I recommend this one.
-- Mike
( 3 out of 4 pops )
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