Kissing Jessica Stein

Last night Beth and I went to see Kissing Jessica Stein at Cambridge Warners. I read a review of this movie in the Guardian a while ago but Warners didn't seem to be bothering to show it. However they put on a total of two performances of it yesterday, one mid-afternoon and one at 18:45. There were only about fifteen people at the 18:45 show, and they saw one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while.

In brief the Jessica's a jewish princess in New York who has been through a series of disastrous men and now, in her late 20s, has her mother and her friends desperately trying to find the right man for her. She's also a Rilke fan. One day one of her friends reads out an ad in the personals with a Rilke quote in it, Jessica's ears prick up, an intellectual soul mate at last, only for her hopes to be dashed when she realises that it's in the "woman seeking woman" section ... but she goes on the date anyway.

The woman she meets is a promiscuous non-Jew with three male partners on the go who wants to experiment with lesbianism for a change.

Sounds like a disaster in the making, but they fall in love despite that.

There's some hilarious sequences where they are trying to make love, some very emotional ones where Jessica in particular is trying to get her head around the whole "being with a woman" thing, some great gags and set pieces and overall it's really rather fine other than an ending that smelled a bit of "we didn't know how to end this movie".

Warners will probably never show it again mind you, but if you come across it on DVD/video or at the Arts then watch it. It's good.