Kissing Jessica Stein

Director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
USA 2001
97 minutes

Jessica Stein is a single, straight, successful journalist; part of a bonded Jewish family living in New York City, who finds herself not as straight as she thought when she meets and begins an intense friendship with career woman Helen Cooper, which ultimately leads to romance.

Our notes

The screenplay is written with a thinking audience in mind. The dialogue sparkles, the characters leap off the screen and the clichés are kept to a minimum. Unlike the average romantic comedy (of either the homo- or hetero-sexual variety), this one deals with thought provoking issues. Helen, a gallery manager, is a lesbian in about the same way a vegetarian might have steak once in a while. Jessica, disillusioned after a series of blind dates with hopeless men, answers Helen's personal ad, not because she is a woman but because she quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Jessica is above all a hopeless perfectionist. This places her in contrast with a mother whose idea of an eligible mate for her daughter is any single Jewish male between 20 and 45, in good enough shape to accept a dinner invitation. Jessica works as a copy editor and fact-checker, finding writers' mistakes with the same zeal she applies to the imperfections of would-be husbands. She goes through a series of disastrous dates, including one with a man whose conversational word choices would make him a copy editor's nightmare. Helen is more flexible, knowing and wise. She seeks not perfection in a partner, but the mysteries of an intriguing personality. She finds it challenging that Jessica has never had a lesbian experience. She arrives at their first real date with an armload of "how-to" manuals and makes such slow progress that Helen is driven all but mad by weeks of interrupted foreplay

The film makes of this situation not a sex comedy but more of an upscale sitcom in which both romantic partners happen to be women. Jessica is fluttery and flighty, breathy and skittish. Helen is cool, grounded and amused. Adding spice is Jessica's panic that someone will find out about her new dating partner. That is anyone like Josh, her boss and former boyfriend; Joan, her pregnant co-worker, or her mother, who invites single IBM executives to dinner.

There are serious episodes to give the story weight. One involves Jessica's reluctance to invite Helen to her brother's wedding, thus revealing to the family the sex of the mysterious "person" she has been dating. The other is a heart-to-heart talk between Jessica and her mother, during which Feldshuh takes an ordinary scene and makes it extraordinary by the way she delivers the simple, heartfelt dialogue. What makes the film a comedy is the way it avoids the more serious emotions involved. The would-be lovers are not exactly having sex because of Jessica's skittish approach to the subject, The film really aims to entertain and does not push any political agenda. The ending can be described as bittersweet, but the film as a whole is a joy to experience.

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