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Review of “Kissing Jessica Stein”

I didn’t want to see Kissing Jessica Stein when I heard what it was about. I thought it was going to be just another movie about a woman who gets left for a man, and I’d had enough of mainstream entertainment’s preoccupation with this particular theme. It’s homophobic and sexist, it reinforces that old patriarchal saw that lesbians and bisexual women just need to find the right man, and most importantly, it’s boring.

To be fair, lesbians are also overly preoccupied with this scenario, using it as an excuse to espouse bi-phobic rhetoric and to assure each other that while they don’t necessarily have a problem with bisexuality per se, they themselves would never actually date a bisexual woman, lest she leave them for…oh the horror!…a man.

As if being left for a woman is so much better. But I digress.

Since some of my best friends (and ex-girlfriends) are bisexual women who are neither dishonest, easily seduced, nor just waiting around for Mr. Right, I find these attitudes offensive, silly, and just plain ignorant. Which is why I was reluctant to see a film that appeared to encourage this kind of thinking.

But I was stuck in a hotel room in Vegas with time to kill and there it was on Pay-Per-View, so I finally gave in and decided to watch it.

It turned out to be the best bet I made all weekend.

Kissing Jessica Stein chronicles the relationship between two women, one “straight” and one bi. Jessica (the straight one, played by Jennifer Westfeldt) answers a personals ad placed by Helen (Heather Juergensen) one day on a lark. The women meet and, to their surprise (and everyone around them), end up in a relationship.

Their relationship eventually hits the rocks when Helen realizes that Jessica’s not as into the sexual aspect of the relationship as she is. Along the way, however, the viewer is treated to a thoughtful, warm, and funny drama about the line between romance and friendship, and how difficult it is sometimes to draw it.

Jessica is the kind of woman few heterosexual people want to know about – the woman who is basically straight but has had the occasional dalliance with another woman. Jessica is seduced by the best-friend quality she finds in Helen that she has been unable to find with a man, and she mistakes fleeting moments of sexual attraction for the enduring kind. Ultimately, both women come to realize that Jessica is more attracted more to the idea of Helen than to Helen herself, and that they both deserve better than that.

Helen is the kind of woman few lesbians want to admit exists – she has primarily dated men in the past but is attracted to both men and women, and genuinely open to dating either. She is also smart, attractive, and likeable, with a penchant for pushing herself and others to take risks and explore new ideas.

As the relationship between the two women unfolds, they both explore universal issues such as what they really want in a relationship, what is fair to ask of the other person, and how family and friends figure into the equation.

The movie swings from witty to poignant to sexy, without ever looking like it’s trying too hard (the “sexy ugly” conversation and the seduction in the restaurant are particularly memorable scenes), and the acting by both the principal and supporting cast members is generally excellent.

The two lead actresses (both heterosexual in real life) are convincing in their roles, although the character of Helen seems like two entirely different people (before and after she meets Jessica) to the point of being distracting. Ditto the male love interest, Josh, whose Mr. Sensitive, good-guy persona in the second half of the movie is a little hard to mesh with the tyrannical, unlikable character he is in the first half.

Also, the chemistry between Jessica and Josh seems a little forced, especially on her part, and the ending is a little too neat. It would have been better if the last few scenes had been set a year later, rather than after just three months have passed.

But these are minor flaws in a film that more than more than makes up for them with sharp, witty dialogue, good acting, and a compelling story.

The issues Kissing Jessica Stein raises about bisexuality make it especially significant, since as much as I complain about all the bad lesbian movies out there and the lack of lesbian visibility in mainstream movies, it’s even worse for bisexual visibility (unless you count the frequent evil/homicidal bisexuals that abound in mainstream films such as Basic Instinct, Diabolique, and Wild Things).

Chasing Amy is really the only mainstream successful movie that has tackled the subject, and although it did a pretty decent job of exploring some of the issues, it never used the word “bisexual” once in the entire film, and it focused more on the male experience of dating a bisexual woman.

Within lesbian movies, a few films such as Go Fish and Bar Girls have tried to address the subject of lesbian bi-phobia. But most either portray bisexuality as an avoidance/denial of lesbianism (as with the chracter of Maria in Everything Relative, who marries a guy because she can’t deal with being gay) or skip right over it entirely, so that a woman who was previously only involved with men for years is suddenly a lesbian who announces she was never really attracted to her boyfriend/husband in the first place (as in Claire of the Moon and Desert Hearts.)

Of course, many women don’t realize they are lesbians until later in life – but many also don’t realize they are bisexual until later, too, a fact which is conveniently ignored in lesbian films.

Kissing Jessica Stein is unique because it manages to generate positive images and discussion of bisexuality, and does so without boring or preaching to the viewer.

The key to experiencing this film, I realized after I watched it, is in how you approach it. If you want to, you can see this as a “lesbian movie” in which the women’s relationship fails because one of the women “goes back to men” (basically, just another illustration that bisexual women can’t be trusted). Or you can view it as justification of the idea that women like Jessica only dabble in women while waiting for the right man to sweep them off their feet.

I believe these are inaccurate readings of the movie, and really missing the point, but many lesbians and bisexual women will still choose to see it this way, anyway (especially if the many online message board rants are any indication).

But if you approach Kissing Jessica Stein as a mainstream movie that explores the sexuality-as-continuum theory, you are quite likely to find yourself watching a ground-breaking and entertaining film. Even if you don’t like the story this movie tells, at least it is contributing to the dialogue around sexual attraction and relationships between women.

And all without a single dead body.

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