One More Kiss

I bought this DVD because I just love Gerard Butler. It is a sad film because it deals with cancer and Sarah, the female protagonist, comes home to Scotland to prepare for her death and to do the things she's always wanted to do before she dies. She has a list which include flying a kite, skydiving, seeing the pyramids, etc. and she asks her former boyfriend, who in now married, to help her accomplish all these things in the short time she has left. His wife, Charlotte, resents it naturally but Sam, Gerard Butler's character, decides that he needs to help her as he has not really gotten over her and loves her still.

Sarah even prepares a speech, which she records, to be shown at the reception after her funeral. And she asks Sam (he's a chef)to prepare a reception for 30 of her dearest friends and relatives. The film gives an insight to the range of emotions that cancer patients go through as they face their mortality. It also teaches the viewers not to take their lives for granted and to live their lives to the fullest...as Sarah said in her farewell speech, "Seize the day, do not go gently but rage, rage at the dying of the day."

For a movie with a subject such as dying, this movie certainly lacks in some strong and effective emotions. There are lots of better movies out there that mixes romance and death but as a whole this movie certainly is not a bad one. On the contrary and this little unknown Scottish movie is very well worth your time.

You can also praise this movie for not trying to be emotional. Normally these type of movies will try to play you with it's emotions, in an often very forced and formulaic way. "One More Kiss" is not a typical sort of dramatic movie and it instead uses some interesting angles, by not mainly concentrating on the main character and her approaching death but also on those around her, who love her and how it affects their lives and makes them think about were they currently stand in life.

But what mainly makes the movie work out so fine is it's acting. Quite amazing how much different Gerard Butler still looked in 1999. Back then he still mostly used the name Gerry Butler, which should also tell you something about the way he looked. He had curly hair and certainly no muscles and seemed like a very young boy still back then, even though he already was 30 at the time of this movie. He of course just like the rest of the cast plays a fine role. Especially James Cosmo was also really great.

The movie doesn't necessarily concentrate on sickness or death but more on life and tells you to get out of life what you can, while you still can. But it doesn't does this in a forced way or anything like that. The movie features some simple but honest storytelling and is skillfully directed by Vadim Jean, who provides the movie with a nice overall style.

A nice little movie.

7/10

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Having left her native Scotland to go to New York to pursue her career, Sarah returns home to tell her family and friends that she has cancer and has little time left to live. Specifically she has returned to spend time with her ex-boyfriend Sam, who is now married. His wife Charlotte is not supportive but Sam does it anyway. While the two of them spend time together they start to become a bit closer and recall memories from the past; meanwhile Sarah also tries to mend things with her present but emotionally distant father Frank.

Within five minutes I realised that I had started watching a genre film in a genre that I generally don't like – the "seize the day while at death's door" movie. Generally an excuse for a load of hankies to come out and the audience to be put through the Hollywood emotional mangle, it is not an experience that I enjoy that much. However, despite some clunky and preachy moments, this is actually quite an engaging and raw experience that I found quite enjoyable, well, maybe "enjoyable" is not a good word. The characters and the emotions are well painted and I can forgive the film its soapy, sweeping opening sequence mainly because it does get much closer to reality from then onwards. Of course it is still a genre movie and it does have its fair share of "seize the day" dialogue but it generally avoids the clichés, cheese and moods that you will find in countless television movies cluttering the daytime television schedules.

The cast help this by being pretty convincing and bringing the best out of the good script. Edmond worried me at first but got stronger as it went on; she was convincing in the main and she works well with her support cast. Butler is not quite as good but he works well with Edmond although he could have done better with Gogan, who herself is perhaps weakened by the fact that her character is not all that it could have been. Cosmo is as solid as he always is and I found him to be easy to care about and relate to (perhaps due to him being rather bottled up). Jean's direction is good and generally avoids sentimentality, to the benefit of the material generally.

Overall then this is a genre film but it is one that is worth a look if, like me, you generally don't care for the genre. It is soapy at times (specifically the opening ten minutes is very "genre") but generally it is convincingly raw and all the better for it. The cast bring this out well and director Vadim Jean seems to have little or no interest in manipulating the audience emotionally or drawing out fake emotions and despite my initial concerns, it was certainly one of the better films I have seen albeit in a generally weak genre (in my opinion).

I bought this movie on E-Bay not knowing anything about it but being seduced by the title, the fact that Gerard Butler was in it, and the description from the video jacket. One More Kiss? A definite waste of money. The heroine was a royally selfish pain who left me cold with her plight: I kept wanting to smack her instead of empathize with her. James Cosmo and Gerry Butler in their roles were excellent. Perhaps the heroine was told to play the role as she did but if so, the director should have been shot. It would have helped a lot to those who are hard of hearing and those of us who are not too familiar with Scottish dialects to have had captioning. The only saving grace was looking at the scrumptious Gerard Butler.

I liked this film because of the fantastic outside, location shooting, mainly of Berwick-upon-Tweed. It is similar to the way Eric Rohmer would film somewhere like Le Mans in his film le Beau Marriage (1982).

Indeed, the dour, granite buildings seem to sum up the awful plight of Sarah (played very ably by Valerie Edmond). She returns to her father's house, right behind the sea wall and the beach in Berwick, which, of course, is not even in Scotland. It's one of those border towns between Scotland and England, the scene of many violent fights to the death over the years. Perhaps there's some symbolism in there somewhere.

James Cosmo is very good as Frank, Sarah's father. Worth watching.