Reviews

Non-narrative films can be great, but this is something different. *Kisses* has enough plot and complications for anyone. Every thread is resolved, every theme revisited in this study of the beauty and terror of adolescents tasting freedom. This is one of those films in which painstakingly localized settings and characterization achieve the universal.

I kept thinking of a line from Dennis Cooper while watching this: "And when they kiss, it's so cold and impressive to them." Yes, the kisses in this film are impressive to the characters, but there's nothing cold about them. They always seem to a seal a bond as warm as the sun. And though there's desperation and insecurity, the characters hold back and compensate as they would in real life. There are things we tell ourselves not to show until at last they show without our permission.

Danger and wonder are everywhere, yet the tone deftly avoids the sentimental even when the structure employs techniques from classic melodrama.

There are moments of joy in *Kisses* in which everything stops, like musical numbers without singing. And the use of color makes you wonder if it's the cinematography that's stunning or simply the world itself.

In the first episode of Lip Service, you'll notice a great deal of self-conscious dialog about political correctness -- what not to call people, how not to characterize them -- that suggests the writers are regurgitating their research and/or being didactic. At that moment, you might wonder whether you ought to keep watching.

But at the same time, the acting and characterization offer a connection to a group of friends whose real-life counterparts are often low-key and underrepresented, partly to allow for survival and a minimum of harassment.

So if you're like me, you'll so want to know and spend time with those characters that you'll keep watching. And if you do, you'll find the verbalized clichés become fewer from the second episode on, and the writing keeps getting better.

Some critics have complained of an absence of "butch lesbians" in the series, which they say favors the "lipstick" kind, but I think they're wrong. I wonder whether the people who say that understand what television representation is or what the culture really involves. First of all, not everyone is the same; some deliberately androgynous female wooers do wear lipstick (sometimes rock stars can be better role models than, say, truck drivers for a player -- if you doubt it, ask Joan Jett). Second, the figures whom one recognizes from real life, and who are often called butch by the very people who desire them, seem lovingly represented on this show -- though, like characters on all TV shows, they are of course conventionally attractive. That's only to be expected on any show: Heather Peace might have broad shoulders, but she also has an angelic face.

As in The L Word and many novels like *The Well of Loneliness* by Radcliffe Hall and others by Ann Bannon, the butch types often seem haunted and emotional behind self-restraint. One of them, Frankie, must come to terms with her life as she tries to care for the woman she loves in the way in which she herself was not cared for. The damage has just as much to do with prejudice, and others' rejection of her as a person, as it does the aftermath of childhood. Perhaps you can relate.

I was very happy to see butch women represented in Lip Service by two of the main characters, just as I was to see classically feminine characters suffer for being themselves as well. You feel for them, but you also understand that it's better to understand pain than overlook it.

There are infinite variations and additions to archetypes in any community of individuals, as anyone with an imagination will have guessed. But I would support any TV show that presented *any* of the wonderful lesbians I've met in real life, so that everyone can have the chance to love and admire them. Lip Service seems to present them to the general public without insulting the demographic it represents. I did find the show titillating as its creators intended — "let's excite our gay audience in a way that also excites straight viewers" — but I see that as a way to introduce the idea of shows like this, so that women in relationships that exclude men — even when they aren't gorgeous and in their 20s and 30s — can become accepted and included more often in mainstream shows over time.

Pity there were only two seasons. I'd have loved to see a third.

If you've followed the history of this film, then you know it was twenty years in the making. The producers who optioned the rights were on a veritable quest. At one point, Val Kilmer was slated to act, Sean Penn, to direct.

Eventually, many Thompson fans consigned the project to limbo, not knowing how passionate the parties involved actually were. (Chris Hanley is the same producer who delivered This World, Then the Fireworks -- one of the most faithful and unapologetic Thompson adaptations.) Having seen Winterbottom's final cut, I'm glad the producers took their time. The screenplay writer and director have made a film so uncompromisingly faithful to Thompson's novel that a few audience members will usually leave the theater during the most graphic scenes.

Make no mistake: This movie is more grisly than anything by Sam Peckinpah, and the subject is as misogynistic as that of Straw Dogs (though it's the character, not the director, who hates women in this case). If you're a person who can't watch or sanction scenes in which women are brutalized, then this is a film to avoid.

If not, then you're ready to see the book represented in its pulpy essence, with excesses and virtues on display.

Psychopathic sheriff Lou Ford is equal parts self-destructive sadist, con man and facade. For him, excessive politeness and long-windedness are forms of veiled hostility. Brutal sarcasm is delivered in a good-natured everyman way. Everything Ford says is double entendre, the punchline, only apparent to him. He ushers people to their doom in the same tone he might use to offer them a drink.

Other film adaptations, from Tavernier's Coup de Torchon to the 70s version of Killer, have missed Ford's quintessentially Southern hostility. Those French and So Cal readings failed to recognize the specific way in which Thompson, himself a Texan, turns the naive good-natured American stereotype on its head. Winterbottom understands it and shows it, as does his lead.

The actor who plays Ford is famous but not yet so ubiquitous that his celebrity obscures the power of Ford's character. Since character carries an unusual amount of weight in Thompson stories, Casey Afflick was a perfect choice: Likable and chameleonic, with an admirable range and a delivery so spent and inviting it will remind you of Bill Clinton's. You don't just enjoy this portrayal of Ford because he's an interesting villain. You actually sympathize with the character's attempts to regain self-control.

When I read a reviewer's description of Ford listening to classical music and reading Freud, I groaned. I thought he'd been reduced to another Hannibal Lecter. The psychopath who resembles a James Bond nemesis and reveals his intelligence by listening to classical music and quoting Nietzsche is an '80s cliché.

Not to worry: Affleck's Ford never talks about culture and he never air-conducts.

From the period-specific tone to the apparent humility and social restraint of the killer -- which made readers sympathize with him even after he committed acts that seemed designed to justify the death penalty -- this film is to Thompson what Wynton Marsalis is to Miles Davis: Reverent to the point of sacrificing personality, but giving back everything in terms of performance, style and formal correctness. The attention to form was particularly appreciated: Having read the book twice, I knew what was coming and still enjoyed the ending.