Kissing on the Mouth

I'll be frank: remember I sought this out because it was a) Joe Swanberg's first movie, and b) it seemed like it was, in part, a soft-core porno. No, it's not that. It has practically hardcore scenes with the director himself. Unfortunately I remember some of those scenes more than the scenes of drama, which involve the revolving lives of college aged people in love (and some of this looks like people in dorms).

It's so naturalistic that it is trying for something different entirely, almost breaking the mold of both pornography films (the usual rough quality is at least given here a more direct shot-list, I think, than what is usually done by directors), and not unlike the other (must quote) "mumblecore" movies there is no firm script so the dialog and talk between actors and what is kind of breaking the fourth wall about relationships is extreme and intimate and extremely intimate all at once.

When I mean extreme is that we get intimate with these actors to where that line is blurred between what is perhaps, arguably, exploiting the young actors who agreed to be in this (female and male, I mean this involves the cutting of public hair on camera), on top of the emotional extremes displayed. What this all amounts to is... maybe not a whole lot. But I was mesmerized watching this - it doesn't function as a typical porno despite the rampant nudity, and it doesn't function as your typical three-act structure dramatic narrative.

It's experimental and in your face and primal and even philosophical and it doesn't give a good damn what you think of it. That's refreshing for a first movie. I just wish I could muster enough energy to watch it again.

You can only do so much with little or no budget. This movie does what it must, I guess, following two or three, very ordinary young folks around, listening to their Hopes And Dreams, capturing plenty of their nudity, doing for their sex lives what Margaret Mead did for the Samoans', listening to them ramble on.

It's in some ways a novel venture. I'd always wondered how women shaved their pubic hair. Now I know, but I still don't know WHY they do it. I can understand a man's trimming his mustache. If you let it go, after a while you can't eat donuts anymore.

I also know something about male masturbation in the shower. I read it about it somewhere, once. But it does absolutely nothing for me to watch a close up of some guy whacking off amid the soap suds.

But then the entire movie, aside from being -- perhaps necessarily -- a little dull in conception, is maddening in execution. Or, let me put it this way: whatever happened to the medium shot? It's a brave movie but not an especially interesting one. If it's a movie, it ought to have a coherent plot somewhere. If we want a slice of humdrum life we can always find somebody tape of the old PBS program, "Family." Somebody compared this to "Brown Bunny," but that's an inept comparison. This one lacks the raw sex and the arrant male narcissism of "Brown Bunny." This one could have been much better if there had been some effort put into the writing, assuming any effort at all was put into it. You can do stuff successfully without having ten million bucks. Has anyone seen "The Little Fugitive"?

I spend a lot of time with the films of young filmmakers. Sometimes I'm completely blown away, because of all the ordinary values and risk that youth carries. A life with film needs this, it really does.

But its an investment that along the way brings a whole lot of disappointment. This is one such.

You may take my view with qualification because one value I hold dear is the "long form," the ability to not just present a world but have something happens therein that matters. It isn't enough to merely display, you have to engage, transform, penetrate.

These kids have some promising intuitions about this: there are within the story two guys: one is a photographer and the other apparently a sound editor. Also, the film alternates between interviews — ostensibly for the sound guy's project — and an ordinary watching of a certain young woman. We learn a few things about her, and along the way see a couple things not often seen in films. So there is structural folding in the thing.

And the performances are natural. But that's not saying much because these characters are only half-people. We learn through DVD extras that this is who they actually are. There's some sex and nudity here. Commentors note that this also is natural. It didn't seem so to me, instead as artificially posed as usual. Yes, I presume that sex we see is "real," at least once. And the camera seems to be casual and lingers on odd trash as much as on bodies, something that mirrors the offhand Gen Y sense of awareness.

But there's nothing done with this at all. One wonders why it was made at all, other than the four involved were bored.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

What a time we live in when someone like this Joe Swan-whatever the hell is considered a good filmmaker...or even a filmmaker at all! Where are the new crop of filmmakers with brains AND talent??? We need them bad, and to hell with mumblecore!

This movie is about nothing, just as the characters in the film stand for nothing. It's this horrible, so-called Gen Y, that is full of bored idiots, some of which declare themselves filmmakers with out bothering to learn anything about the craft before shooting. Well, Orson Welles was a filmmaker. John Huston was a filmmaker. Fellini was a filmmaker. Dreyer was a filmmaker, etc. Current films like these show just how stupid young, so-called "filmmakers" can be when they believe going out with no script, no direction, no thought, no legit "camerawork" (everything shot horribly on DV), no craft of editing, no nothing, stands for "rebellious" or "advanced" film-making. Nope, it's called ignorance and laziness or just pure masturbation of cinema (and there actually is an in-your-face "jack-off shot," so be ready).

Look at the early films of any accomplished "indie" filmmaker: Linklatter, Morris, Allen, Lynch, Hartley, Jarmusch, Jost, Lee, or Herzog...none made anything as tedious and aimless as this, yet Swan-whatever the hell, is still going to SXSW every year and hailed as some kind of gutsy, new talent. It's crap! I can't imagine anyone liking this, and everything else this so-called filmmaker has done (all seen by me) is just as bad (the newer stuff clearly made to appeal to a more mainstream audience, one of the sitcom calling). Steer clear, unless you're a friend or family member of those involved...on second thought, if you're a family member or friend you'd probably be embarrassed to see a family member or friend in such compromising situations...

Utter garbage. This isn't art. This is the ultimate opposite of it.

No, I don't like it.

The summary makes reference to the main character's (Ellen) insertion of the word "like" in just about every sentence! It's a common,annoying California verbal tic that once you hear it, you can't stop hearing it! And she's got it bad! "So he's, like, "I don't know," and I'm, like, "Why not?" so they like, got up and left, and we, like, got up and left, too..." Pretty much every time she speaks..

No one involved with the movie noticed this? Totally unwatchable! Also, what's with the guy jerking off in the shower? What was the reason to subject us to that? My guess is the guy was horny and, this being such an amateur attempt at movie making, said, "Let's use it - it's edgy!"