Kissing on the Mouth

As someone who is currently 24, I found this film to be very meaningful. The situation of the characters, without direction in life, taking delight in small things like an apartment with cool wall colors, resonates with me. They are interested in having relationships, but seem lost.

The script includes many humorous moments, and feels very realistic given my experience. The characters are reflective, and sometimes even insightful. There are also segments with a voice-over of other people my age reflecting on their experiences.

The acting is hyper-realistic, with people rubbing their noses while talking to friends, and just acting like normal people instead of Hollywood super humans. While some of the situations may be stereotypical (taking laundry home to a parent's house), the script and the acting makes these moments fascinating.

I would recommend this movie for any young adults interested in thinking deeply about their own lives. Perhaps you will find that the characters are feeling their way through the same situations as you.

I'll be frank: remember I sought this out because it was a) Joe Swanberg's first movie, and b) it seemed like it was, in part, a soft-core porno. No, it's not that. It has practically hardcore scenes with the director himself. Unfortunately I remember some of those scenes more than the scenes of drama, which involve the revolving lives of college aged people in love (and some of this looks like people in dorms).

It's so naturalistic that it is trying for something different entirely, almost breaking the mold of both pornography films (the usual rough quality is at least given here a more direct shot-list, I think, than what is usually done by directors), and not unlike the other (must quote) "mumblecore" movies there is no firm script so the dialog and talk between actors and what is kind of breaking the fourth wall about relationships is extreme and intimate and extremely intimate all at once.

When I mean extreme is that we get intimate with these actors to where that line is blurred between what is perhaps, arguably, exploiting the young actors who agreed to be in this (female and male, I mean this involves the cutting of public hair on camera), on top of the emotional extremes displayed. What this all amounts to is... maybe not a whole lot. But I was mesmerized watching this - it doesn't function as a typical porno despite the rampant nudity, and it doesn't function as your typical three-act structure dramatic narrative.

It's experimental and in your face and primal and even philosophical and it doesn't give a good damn what you think of it. That's refreshing for a first movie. I just wish I could muster enough energy to watch it again.

You can only do so much with little or no budget. This movie does what it must, I guess, following two or three, very ordinary young folks around, listening to their Hopes And Dreams, capturing plenty of their nudity, doing for their sex lives what Margaret Mead did for the Samoans', listening to them ramble on.

It's in some ways a novel venture. I'd always wondered how women shaved their pubic hair. Now I know, but I still don't know WHY they do it. I can understand a man's trimming his mustache. If you let it go, after a while you can't eat donuts anymore.

I also know something about male masturbation in the shower. I read it about it somewhere, once. But it does absolutely nothing for me to watch a close up of some guy whacking off amid the soap suds.

But then the entire movie, aside from being -- perhaps necessarily -- a little dull in conception, is maddening in execution. Or, let me put it this way: whatever happened to the medium shot? It's a brave movie but not an especially interesting one. If it's a movie, it ought to have a coherent plot somewhere. If we want a slice of humdrum life we can always find somebody tape of the old PBS program, "Family." Somebody compared this to "Brown Bunny," but that's an inept comparison. This one lacks the raw sex and the arrant male narcissism of "Brown Bunny." This one could have been much better if there had been some effort put into the writing, assuming any effort at all was put into it. You can do stuff successfully without having ten million bucks. Has anyone seen "The Little Fugitive"?

This film was absolutely awful, I even feel uncomfortable calling it a film. Its the typical "mumblecore" movie, with zero plot and a bunch of aimless whiny twenty somethings stumbling around trying to "figure stuff out". I have tried to give mumblecore a chance, but lets be honest its just horrible.

I am not out of sync with cinema, I appreciate Dogme95 films, Idioterne is one of my all time favorite films. So I do not mind if a film is cheaply made so long as there is some (ANY) substance.

Everything in this film is horrid, the acting, the writing (or was it all improvised?), the direction, but MOST of all, above everything else, the camera work was just plain and simple nonsense. The camera was never anywhere logical, there was no consistency. I got to admit being a guy I had heard there was nudity in this film so I thought to myself well even if its horrible at least there's nudity (yea I know, I'm a jerk). Well thanks to the uber crappy camera-work you never really get to see anything, and the things you do see, TRUST ME - YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE. This film made me want to vomit on numerous levels.

The dialogue made me want to vomit, the camera-work made me want to vomit, but mostly the idea that this film was praised by some legit critics, well now that more than anything makes me want to vomit.

I think that often people who write these comments have never attempted to make anything more than a video of their kid's birthday parties or their cat playing with a koosh. It's not as easy as it looks. Just look at You Tube and you will find plenty of people who don't know the first thing about making a film let alone making something worth watching. Joe Swanberg is not one of them. He is a talented filmmaker with a knack for telling a story in a new and innovative way, and his work so far proves his abilities. Joe's films and web show are some of the most well made, inventive, do it yourself film-making to come along in years. If you don't get it, do yourself a favor and take a course in film history. Film-making is more than just creating something that appeals to a broad audience, or even a small one. It's about making art and telling your story. And if this is Joe's story, then props to him for getting it out there for others to enjoy. If you like Altman, then go watch Altman and stop complaining. Let the rest of us enjoy the good stuff out there... ALL of it.