''Just a Kiss'' is a 2002
dark comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...
film and the
directorial debut
This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many film makers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...
of
Fisher Stevens
Fisher Stevens (born Steven Fisher; November 27, 1963) is an American actor, director, producer and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Ben in ''Short Circuit'' and ''Short Circuit 2'', Chuck Fishman on the 1990s televis ...
.
Patrick Breen
Joseph Patrick Breen (born October 26, 1960) is an American actor, screenwriter, and director.
Early life
Breen was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 26, 1960.
Career
He has acted primarily on TV but has also appeared in numerous films, ...
wrote the screenplay adapted from his own
off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
play entitled ''Marking'' and co-starred in the film. The story follows a disastrous chain of events that results from a kiss between two unfaithful people. The film contains a mixture of live action scenes with
rotoscoped
Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, animators projected photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel and traced ov ...
animation
Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...
. ''Just a Kiss'' was filmed in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
Plot
Dag is a successful director of television commercials who lives with his girlfriend, Halley. Dag, however, has a serious case of wandering eye and is given to frequent flings with other women. Halley tries to turn a blind eye to Dag's infidelity, but when she discovers Dag had a one-night stand with Rebecca, a beautiful but troubled
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
dancer who is dating Dag's close friend Peter, she decides things have gone too far. To add to her feeling of betrayal, she hears a message on the answering machine for Dag from another woman looking to meet up. Halley breaks up with Dag; soon after, she makes the acquaintance of Andre, a handsome and well-mannered classical musician. Andre, however, is married to Colleen, a woman with exotic sexual tastes who meets up with Peter, now suddenly without a girlfriend, on an airline flight. Peter and Colleen have sex in the plane’s bathroom. Just before the plane lands, Peter makes a cell phone call, which causes interference with the signals from the plane’s control tower and results in the plane crashing. The plane breaks in half and lands a few feet from the front gate. While all travelers in the
first-class section survive, everyone in the
economy class
Economy class, also called third class, coach class, steerage, or to distinguish it from the slightly more expensive premium economy class, standard economy class or budget economy class, is the lowest travel class of seating in air travel, rail ...
section is burned beyond recognition. An ambulance runs over Colleen, killing her. Meanwhile, Peter's very angry confrontation with Dag attracts the attention of Paula, a mysterious, alluring woman who has taken a decidedly carnal interest in Peter. Paula first gets involved with Dag in a sexual encounter that injures him and leads to his death. She next sets her sights on Peter, but he rejects her as he is mourning Colleen. Hurt by his rejection, Paula plots to kill Peter next. Andre, Peter and Rebecca mourn their respective lovers. However, as Paula makes her way through Peter's daisy-chained circle of friends, events take an even stranger turn as her new acquaintances begin to die in great numbers.
Cast
Release
Paramount Classics
Paramount Vantage (also known as Paramount Classics) was a film distribution, film distribution label of Paramount Pictures (which, in turn, has Paramount Global as its parent company), charged with producing, purchasing, distributing and marketin ...
acquired the film for distribution in 2001. ''Just a Kiss'' premiered at the
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees. The SIFF runs for more th ...
on June 15, 2002
and was given a
limited release
__FORCETOC__
Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...
on September 27, 2002.
Reception
On review aggregate website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, ''Just a Kiss'' has an approval rating of 18% based on 60 reviews. The site’s critics consensus reads, "With annoying characters and gimmicks, the romantic comedy ''Just a Kiss'' is neither touching nor funny."
Reviewers criticized the film’s structure, the mix of varying film genres and styles, and the animated sequences, which many felt added little to the story.
Of the animation,
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
said the technique was better executed in the film ''
Waking Life
''Waking Life'' is a 2001 American experimental adult animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the ...
'', which was released a year prior.
Ebert wrote, "I can imagine a way in which this could work, in a
Roger Rabbit
Roger Rabbit is an animated anthropomorphic rabbit. The character first appeared in author Gary K. Wolf's 1981 novel, ''Who Censored Roger Rabbit?'' In the book, Roger is second banana in a popular comic strip, "Baby Herman". Roger hires private ...
-type movie that moves in and out of the cartoon dimension. But it doesn't work here because it is manifestly and distractingly only a stunt. And the whole movie, in various ways, has the same problem: It's all surface, without an entry point into whatever lurks beneath. The characters, dialogue, personal styles and adventures are all mannerisms. The actors are merely carriers of the director's contrivances."
Ken Eisner of ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' gave a positive review, saying it "mixes swell ensemble acting with eye-popping animation for a witch’s brew of good sex, bad timing and very funny dialogue."
Eisner singled out Tomei as the ensemble's standout and concluded that while Stevens' "eclectic, sometimes willfully silly attack definitely won’t please everyone, those who buy it will find much tender feeling for human frailty beneath the pixilated surface."
''
TV Guide
TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...
'' wrote, "veterans of the dating wars will smirk uneasily at the film's nightmare versions of everyday sex-in-the-city misadventures." Stephen Holden of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' was similarly positive, praising "its surreal sense of humor and technological finish."
Holden welcomed the animation and wrote, "bursts of feeling are often animated in bright jungle colors that underscore the characters' emotional heat while lending their feelings a cartoonish abstraction. The effect is distancing because it illustrates the ultimate banality of passion."
However, Holden commented the film "only half-succeeds in making its surreal game of mixed doubles transcend
soap-opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored b ...
spoof. After a while the endless complaining begins to wear thin, and the more surreal the story becomes, the more it pulls away from characters, who seem more and more like pieces in a board game."
Writing for ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'', Scott Tobias said "the further
tevens and Breenpush the material into outright absurdity, the stranger and funnier it gets", but also opined, "Too bad Breen's script—a
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), known best as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.
Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadge ...
contraption with seven principal characters bouncing off each other—takes far too long in getting to the punchlines."
Tobias also critiqued the film's portrayal of women, noting that "the men may be fallible, but the women are psychotics, with a roster that includes one split personality, one vengeful stalker, and two suicidal narcissists with the scars on their wrists to prove it."
Both Holden and Ebert singled out Zoe Caldwell's performance as Rebecca's mother, Jessica.
Holden wrote, "As Jessica imperiously ticks off a list of famous former lovers, the movie finds its only note of genuine erotic despair."
Awards
In 2002, the film won the Prize of the City of
Setúbal
Setúbal (, , ; cel-x-proto, Caetobrix) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population in 2014 was 118,166, occupying an area of . The city itself had 89,303 inhabitants in 2001. It lies within the Lisbon metropolitan area.
In the ti ...
at the
Festróia - Tróia International Film Festival
The Tróia International Film Festival, commonly referred to as Festroia ( pt, Festival Internacional de Cinema de Tróia – Festróia) was an annual international film festival in Portugal held from 1985 to 2014.
Held in the town of Setúbal and ...
.
It was also nominated for the
Open Palm Award for outstanding directorial debut at the
Gotham Awards
The Gotham Awards () are American film awards, presented annually to the makers of independent films at a ceremony in New York City, the city first nicknamed "Gotham" by native son Washington Irving, in an issue of ''Salmagundi'', published on ...
.
References
External links
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{{Fisher Stevens
2002 black comedy films
2002 independent films
2002 films
2002 comedy films
Adultery in films
Films set in New York City
Films about suicide
2000s sex comedy films
2002 directorial debut films
Films directed by Fisher Stevens
American films based on plays
2000s English-language films