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A KISS IS (NOT) JUST A KISS…
06/09/2007
When Emilie refuses to kiss Gabriel after a chance encounter, it is the beginning of a long story about another innocent, meaningless kiss that, however, triggered a dramatic chain of events. But can history and human desire ever keep from repeating themselves?
Shall We Kiss? (Un baiser, s’il vous plaît) by Emmanuel Mouret, back behind the camera just one year after his successful Change of Address, asks that question and, the director jokes, “is very educational because Emilie and Gabriel actually find a solution to that problem, which I invite all of you to employ.”
The very nature of desire is as important as cinema itself to Mouret: “One of the ideas of the film was to show how one story influences another and changes it and whether kisses without consequences really exist. I was also influenced by Montaigne, who says that [in French] thinking (penser) comes from weighing (peser), so that when we think we are also weighing situations in the sense of examining them.”
That the characters all try to fight something so much bigger than they are makes this story within a story of a comedy of errors that nevertheless does not shy away from drama and sensuality. One of the film’s stars, Virginie Ledoyen, lauded Mouret’s directing gifts, stating: “Emmanuel’s talent lies in the fact that with great modesty he can create something sensual and erotic that is also very original.”
The originality lies above all in the film’s structure, which according to the director was fundamental because a flashback to another story “is like opening a drawer in which there is another drawer, and yet another, and represents desire’s complicated essence and people’s almost always futile attempts to rationalize the irrational.”
Natasha Senjanovic
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