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Review by Harvey Karten
No Rating Supplied
"Kissing Jessica Stein" is a swiftly-paced, superficially
sophisticated story bearing the firm New York imprint about
young men and women living upper-middle-class lifestyles
presumably from generous parental donations. The movie is
thematically as Jewish as the Zabar's and H&H Bagels stores
that zip by cinematographer Lawrence Sher's camera and bears
the theatrical mark of the film writers' off-off Broadway play
"Lipschtick" which inspired the movie.
The film is entertaining enough if you're in the light-and-fluffy
mood and your cable reception is off, but we've seen it all
before. Director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld parades the usual
suspects: There's the stereotypical, octagenarian Jewish
grandma who in the synagogue makes comments like "he has
no sex appeal" and at a wedding reception later on comments
that a woman is "flat chested." There are two gay guys who
serve as advisers to a lesbian woman, calling her a "disgrace to
the gay community" because she dates a woman who is
straight. As the mother of the confused title figure, Judy Stein is
your typical, well-to-do Jewish mother regularly trying to fix her
daughter up with a nice guy, concerned that Jessica will be
alone lest she connect with someone except that in this case
the cliche is transcended by the one truly professional performer
in this shoe-string budgeted movie, Tovah Feldshuh.
The woman whose life appears to change radically when she
receives her first kiss from another of her own gender is Jessica
Stein (Jennifer Westfeldt), a fast-talking, supposedly bright
twenty-something who works in a publishing house, having
been hired by a guy she dated for year, Josh Meyers (Scott
Cohen). (Close your eyes and you're listening to Helen Hunt.)
When her working pal in the next cube, the pregnant Joan
(Jackie Hoffman), calls her attention to a woman-seeking-
woman ad in the Village Voice, she is impressed because the
advertiser quotes the philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke. Having
gone through a succession of guys, all of whom are losers in
their own particular ways, she reluctantly meets assistant art
gallery director Helen Cooper (Heather Juergensen), and is
seduced after receiving a long kiss in the street from her new
companion. Though she appears happy in the relationship,
there are hints that while the bisexual and sexually needy Helen
knows who she is, Jessica is merely experimenting.
The tagline is right on target: "When it comes to love,
sometimes she just can't think straight." The film, which was co-
written by the actors Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather
Juergensen, is too prosaic to match up to that line much less to
evoke the imagination of a Rilke.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
