Kissing
Jessica Stein

by Shari L. Rosenblum

Jessica Stein is a socially uptight, judgmental, self-impressed, sexually repressed perfectionist with the fake sweet voice of a girl raised on the "be ladylike" mantra, the unthreatening good looks of a Jewish woman acceding to the WASP ideal, a full-blown stereotype intrusive Jewish mother, a requisite mizkeit friend, pregnant and quippy, and a 1950s era need to be married by thirty, come hell or highwater. Surprisingly, she's having a hard time finding a man.

Unfortunately, though, she found a movie. Kissing Jessica Stein.

Kissing Jessica Stein, lauded all around for its light good fun, is about lesbianism Hollywood style. Clean, girlfriendy, and about everything but sex. Women sleeping with women because they just can't talk to men. Just like in real life.

The plot is simple. Unable to find a man who can quote Rilke, the titular Jessica (Jennifer Westfeldt) answers the ad of a woman seeking women on the premise that she can. Helen (Heather Juergensen), who placed the ad, is a not-yet- lesbian shiksa with a voracious sexual hunger looking for an alternative to the same old in and out. Helen can't quote Rilke (she took the quote that seduced Jessica from her gay male friends who assured her it would get her all the alternative she could stand), but she uses marinate as a verb, and apparently, that's enough to get Jessica's juices flowing . . .

After many weeks and much patience on Helen's part. Jessica and Helen start to date and fall in love. Though hitherto hetero, the sex is just great for both of them (include giggle detail about the uselessness of the phallus, anyway), and yet subtle enough for Roger Ebert to comment that they had none (with his usual flair for accuracy). But Jessica, true to her roots and her wannabe Annie Hall heritage, thinks that good as it is, never is often enough; she's happier picking up Helen's dirty tissues from a seriously bad cold. Helen, though, remains he-manly hopeful of more subtle sex. And so the women are faced with a choice: Can the ladies stay together? Can they be friends? Titters of boredom ensue.

Attempting to be clever, the film (written by Wetfeldt and Juergensen and directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld) merely rehashes the trite formula of every romantic comedy that's gone before it, giving it a bright, shiny new age wrapper without bothering to even reheat the contents. We're even given the traditional soul mate waiting in the wings: the ex-boss one-time lover who used to not be good enough for Jessica. You'll have to see it to believe it, though chances are you've seen it before.

Kissing Jessica Stein is a movie that, like its namesake, pretends to be playful, but in the end goes down more like an aging wine - a smooth and comfortably familiar taste that can only hint at something that it might have become.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

©2002 Shari L. Rosenblum
CineScene