Review of In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) by Nathan F — 19 Dec 2008

Gee, do you think these kids have seen Manhattan? Alex Holdridge, our writer-director, tries to regress Allen's aged love note to New York City back to that darling age of twenty-something while swapping coasts for Los Angeles--and let's not kid ourselves, kids: this is a magnificently shot film. Just like black-and-white worked wonders for Allen and his love-hate relationship with his hometown, the classy duotone here lets us linger over images surprisingly appetizing for LA--a place often mistaken for purgatory (the centerpiece of Allen's film, the planetarium scene, is here rather overtly converted into a scene at the Orpheum). The writing follows Allen's formula as well, but is, how shall we say it, a bit less highbrow--opening with a masturbation scene and unfolding into ribs on Craigslist and condoms, we might be more reminded of Clerks than Manhattan if it wasn't for the cinematography. Both Allen and Smith have their characters deliver packaged diatribes more than engage in so-called 'conversing'; Allen ranted about sex, but on his own scholastic psychoanalytic terms; Smith ranted about sex, using profanity like currency. How does Holdridge do it? Unfortunately for the first half, more of the latter: these characters (Gen-X slacker; crazy, but sultry, girl) aren't exactly new, so we're banking on their chemistry. If whether or not Wilson and Vivian will end up locking lips at midnight was supposed to be uncertain, it certainly missed me--we know where this is going, so we better believe the way we get there. What Holdridge gets right about awkward college courtship--Wilson taking 'all 100' dollars out of his account just for Vivian; the sly way we 'trade' something for a kiss, sneaking around the whole implications of such a gesture--are lost in his juvenile rhetoric of pubic hair and PostSecret, recalling at best a tired TV-MA sitcom and at worst a well-shot Youtube series. These kinds of flimsy, profanity-laced colloquies are so common and impersonal that when the film tries to insert serious-minded montages set to sad faces, we're just left thinking: what the hell? Wait a second, you think, this is supposed to be serious?

Until it gets to be that time--the yearly rebirth must have helped Holdridge, because starting with The Midnight Kiss (handled with the care it needed) his film becomes much, much better. Suddenly, he decides to shelve most of the jokes and pry open his leads. For characters we're only remotely invested in so far, it works curiously well. He somehow manages to have Vivian intone two words almost always toxic and mawkish, and make it hit. When an answering machine message recalls a vague lover from Wilson's past, one we've forgotten about since her brief mention in the exposition, it levels us as well as him; we all understand its tender unexpectedness--we know there's a chance love can be started in a single night, but not ended. When they finally get around to doing the deed, it's handled with genuine affection that we would've thought incapable by those who just gave us several servings of sleaze. It seems like one of those tricky double crosses--has Holdridge thrown us off his trail with the first half, so generic and amateurish, only so the second half strikes more touchingly? It might make the finale more climactic; but you can't help wondering how much better it could've been if he'd stuck to that formula the whole way through. The second half is so promising as a debut that it almost erases the middling and forgettable section ahead of it; but not quite. A mediocre film with a nice aftertaste.