Strangers kiss

Interesting if somewhat uneasy and unsuccessful behind-the-scenes Hollywood drama set in 1955. Taking its cue from Stanley Kubrick's "Killer's Kiss" (also made in 1955), a new director and his young producer get funding from a Los Angeles mobster to shoot their film script on a soundstage in Culver City. The mobster's girlfriend is also cast in the lead, but art begins to mirror real-life when the girl and her male lead, a romantic-minded newcomer playing a boxer, begin to have feelings for each other. Directed by Matthew Chapman and written by Chapman and co-star Blaine Novak, "Strangers Kiss" has undercurrents of menace; perhaps Novak's experience working on Peter Bogdanovich's "They All Laughed" with Sean Ferrer--who is this film's associate producer--gave the filmmakers some insight into forbidden love on a movie-set (Bogdanovich having fallen for the ill-fated Dorothy Stratten during the making of "Laughed"). This is a handsome low-budget effort from Orion Classics, and Peter Coyote is really something as the intense director of the film-within-the-film, but Novak and Victoria Tennant are too modern to be convincing in this milieu. However, the two do share the movie's best sequence--the awkward-funny shooting of a kissing scene--and the predictably sad feelings at the finish are well-conveyed. ** from ****