Kissing Jessica Stein

Kissing Jessica Stein is supremely wonderful. It is the best romantic comedy I have ever seen. The movie made me laugh, it made me cry, it was everything you could ever want in a movie. I would recommend it to anyone. The characters are hilarious, but three dimensional and the sense of humor that the movie carries is phenomenal.

The scenes in New York and beautifully shot, also and the Jewish family is very much like my own. Though some characters might be called stereotypical, I would have to thoroughly disagree and say that I thought every character had their our twists and turns. Lastly, I thought the chemistry between Helen and Jessica was so perfect for the movie. At first Jessica was uncomfortable, but by the end of their relationship Jessica was dependent on Helen.

Beautiful, beautiful movie!!

Superficially, one could easily be deceived into mistaking this as a story about non-conventional relationships, or for that matter, that it is a film about "women's" issues. But aside from the fact that the principal characters are women, it is about the all too common problem of relationships. Jessica is very neurotic, expecting rather too much from each relationship while yet giving too little, with the result that no relationship is ever quite "perfect" enough for her, and mostly she ends up feeling lonely. It's not that she doesn't "like" males, but that she can always find something wrong with them. Then she meets Helen, a hedonist, bored with males for different reasons, and they become launched on a journey of discovery together following an awakening in the form of a kiss.

If the film limited its scope to growth through discovery and self- realization, such that Jessica overcame her neurotic perfectionism and Helen surpassed her hedonism, it would have been a much better movie. Unfortunately, it is far too self-conscious and desultory, like Jessica herself, expecting to accomplish too much while delivering too little, wondering over far too much time, and ending without adequately addressing the relationship issues it began with. Indeed, while it "pretends" to question conventional relationship values, it actually promotes them, after a brief detour which mostly begs the question. No doubt it was intended to provoke, but like Jessica, mostly it's just a tease.

I would like to begin by saying that this is most definitely not a bad a movie. For anyone starved by the vapid potboilers showing today, this movie offers a refreshing change. What it does not do, however, is distinguish itself in any positive way.

My main complaint with this film is its vapid intellectualism. Quoting famous authors and using lots of fancy (even foreign) words is all good in principle, but when you fail to capture the secular humanism that all great art and literature represent you might as well be reading a McDonald's menu. To illustrate this, Jessica begins the film at a job she hates and with only the memories of a failed relationship. She ends the film in another job she hates and with only the memories of another failed relationship. Where is the personal growth? Why are we watching this? The person that wrote this story seems to believe that simply because one relationship was hetero and the other homosexual, this somehow makes things different. I do not draw such distinctions.

Another thing I did not like about the film was its poor characterizations. The arguments in the film are so trivial that it depends on deep characters to make us believe they are real. I mean anyone that requires literature to get into the act of sex is really missing the point! From a masculine point of view the entire sexual experimentation shown in the film is as bland and uninteresting as the men Jessica is shown dating.

One last comment I would like to make is that the thing this movie does best is bring itself down. Routinely Jessica is told, "You're too obsessed with perfection in others", and that is exactly true for the entire film. She is also told "you're too conservative sexually for this kind of lifestyle", and this is true as well. What I would like to see is some kind change in Jessica to identify with these issues. To use a quote, "we must learn to be happy because of and not in spite of our flaws". Rent Manhattan for a true thinking person's film, and leave this on the shelf.

Jessica Stein (Jennifer Westfeldt) is a hopelessly single gal in the city. Her Jewish mother Judy (Tovah Feldshuh) is very concern. Everybody is getting married and moving on. She has nothing but bad dates. She thinks she's getting set up with Charles (Jon Hamm) but he's actually taken. At the group diner date, co-worker Josh Meyers (Scott Cohen) insults her with biting insights and cruelty. Helen Cooper (Heather Juergensen) is a bisexual art gallery assistant who places an intriguing personal ad. Jessica decides to answer it.

Westfeldt is playing the neurotic city girl. It's her goto move. It's cute. It's awkward. It has some fun. It's not particularly profound. It feels like a straight person's vision of a gay relationship. Everybody's life is different. I can buy into this relationship. It just pushes too hard with too many cute moments with cute awkward Westfeldt. It feels too light weight when the material keeps begging to be darker. It feels too much like a TV sitcom for too long.

There are so few lesbian genre films "OUT" there. And for those lesbian genre films that do exist most have characters that are either disturbed psychopaths (my favorite- Heavenly Creatures) or cardboard cutout prototypes that have no place in my world. As result, unfortunately most lesbians are starved for good lesbian genre films. The best lesbian roles have usually been played out in supporting role characters within the main stream. To appease the appetite, `gaydar' commands an ever watchful eye to find those precious tidbits.

However, thank heavens for the charming wit and refreshingly real characters in "Kissing Jessica Stein". "Kissing Jessica Stein" goes beyond the stereotypical to explore individual characters for who they are and what they are going through in their lives. The film is a positive reinforcement on the value of relationships to an individual's personal growth and spiritual evolution.

"Kissing Jessica Stein" is a highly intelligent romantic comedy that goes deep to explore emotional relationships: Not only between Jessica and Helen but also between Jessica and her Mother, Jessica and Josh, other co-workers and all of their friends. The film highlights the importance of discovering yourself and of letting those that love and care about you know who and what makes you happy. Ultimately anyone that truly loves you wants you to be happy. Jessica and Helen's continued deep friendship after their breakup is testament to this. Jessica's painting, Josh's true love for writing and Helen's continued enjoyment of a lesbian sexual relationship is also testament.

All is true to the spiritual core of the writers intent. There is no definitive end to ongoing life. The writers cleverly leave us to "marinate" within our own imaginations.