Strangers Kiss (USA, 1983) 94 min color DIR: Matthew Chapman. PROD: Douglas Dilge, Blaine Novak. SCR: Blaine Novak, Matthew Chapman. MUSIC: Gato Barbieri. DOP: Misha Suslov. CAST: Peter Coyote, Victoria Tennant, Blaine Novak, Dan Shor, Richard Romanus, Linda Kerridge. (Thorn EMI Video)
Just the kind of movie to find on VHS in a “for sale” bin as stores continue to make room on their shelves for DVDs, Strangers Kiss is indeed an unheralded discovery: a very low key but interesting “movie within a movie” about a supposed love triangle which emerges during the filming of a melodrama, circa 1955. Film buffs will notice that the black-and-white movie they are making (via the key scenes we see being directed) is a rendition of Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss! There is no mannequin sequence in here, but there are re-enactments of the goofy goldfish bowl shot and the wraparound scene in the train station.
However, Peter Coyote’s character (simply referred to as “The Director”) is not some twenty-something precocious whiz kid, as Kubrick was in 1955, nor some larger-than-life visionary, as Kubrick was soon to be. (However, in the offbeat ending, the director talks of his next project involving a heist, a la Kubrick’s subsequent The Killing.) The filmmaker is interestingly played as a workmanlike person who is just trying to get his job done right. And for the sake of the project, he encourages his two leads (Blaine Novak, Victoria Tennant) to “fall in love” offscreen to try and make up for their previously lacking chemistry before the camera. And in a plot twist as contrived as the B-pictures of yore, her boyfriend (Richard Romanus, best remembered from Mean Streets) is an insanely jealous mobster.
There is little plot development as the picture unfolds– it is just a subtle piece about the headaches involved in making a movie. Because or in spite of the subject matter, one is always reminded they are watching a movie, as the performances are just slightly overplayed to make us aware of the craft of acting (only Coyote really keeps it down). Sadly, Tennant and Novak (also the film’s co-writer and co-producer) are terrible performers- on or off the camera inside this little picture, which naturally ruins the effect of a project which is, after all, about personality. This delicate valentine to moviemaking of yore has a haunting feel to it. Although it isn’t drenched in period flavour, it does feel from another time, helped immeasurably by Misha Suslov’s evocative cinematography, and Gato Barbieri’s sultry saxophone on the soundtrack.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #8.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.