Susan Granger’s review of “KISSING JESSICA STEIN” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
This off-beat romantic comedy revolves around women so desperate about finding Mr. Right that they decide to date each other. When we first meet 28 year-old Jessica Stein (Jennifer Westfeldt), she’s in synagogue, where her mother (Tovah Feldshuh) and grandmother care less about meditation and more about the options for match-making within the congregation. Jessica Stein is a nice, if neurotic Jewish girl from Scarsdale who can’t find a guy. She’s a New York City newspaper copy editor who – in despair – answers a “Women Seeking Women” personals ad placed by a funky, assertive, oversexed art-gallery owner named Helen Cooper (Heather Jurgensen) who’s involved with three different men and decides to try lesbianism for a change. But that revelation comes later. At first, Jessica’s attracted by Helen’s quotation from the “very profound” poet Rilke. Jessica and Helen engage in a cute courtship, relishing their compatibility while calculating how far to go on each date, seemingly more giddy about finding a new friend than discovering a lover. It’s all about intimacy, exploring the boundaries between friendship and love. Whether sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice or a genetic predisposition is not an issue to director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld nor to actresses Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Jurgensen, who wrote the sassy, snappy script based on their off-off Broadway play, “Lipschtick.” The film’s bittersweet, comically evasive tone evokes an urbane Woody Allen motif, while its poignant good-nature about bisexuality and homosexuality is reminiscent of last year’s “Big Eden,” which had similar, open-minded family values about gay men. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Kissing Jessica Stein” is a charming, if clumsy 7. It’s a lesbian love affair played for laughs.
