I have always appreciated the idea of the New Year. That one moment, when admidst all of life's turmoil, we turn our attentions to the year ahead, decide on ways we can improve ourselves, and bid farewell to all of the joys and miseries of the past year. And of course I know all too well the awkward feeling of ringing in a new year alone in love. Be it the evils of societal pressure, or a simple reminder that I am again alone on the birth of a new year, I always crave partnership when I am in this situation. This may be just one reason why indie director Alex Holdridge's In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) struck such a chord with me.
As a film, I see it as the remake of Godard's Breathless (1960) that Jim McBride failed to make with his Breathless (1983). Both this and the McBride film are set in Los Angeles, but where McBride went wrong, in trying to transfer a story that only made sense in 1959 Paris to 1983 LA, Holdridge completely avoided, creating an entirely new story that actually makes sense in its setting. Of course, as close as this film struck to me, I will not even try to exalt it to the philosophical genius of Godard, but I will admit that it made more sense to me on a day-to-day level. Perhaps this is only evidence of its culture-specific significance, while Breathless (1960) is a timeless masterpiece. Either way, the Godardian handheld, black-and-white cinematography that captures the landscape of Los Angeles as well as the organic relationship between Wilson (Scoot McNairy) and Vivian (Sara Simmonds) brings to mind first and foremost the brief, failed Parisian romance of Michel and Patricia. Appropriately, Wilson is not a petty car theif who shoots a policeman like Michel; instead he is a lonely, unsuccessful screenwriter, whose only crime is revealed in an amusingly awkward scene at the beginning of the film, in which his best friend walks in on him masturbating to a photo-shopped picture of his girlfriend, prompting him to force Wilson to put a personal ad onto Craig's List. Luckily for him, the beautiful and refreshingly dysfunctional Vivian is the first to respond.
Where the film goes wrong is in the starved filler dialogue as Wilson and Vivian wander around LA, trying to judge whether or not they want to welcome the new year in with one another. However, this proves to be a VERY short lag, that is picked up at the point in which Wilson makes a confession to Vivian, a la artist Frank Warren's "PostSecret" project (postsecret.blogspot.com). His confession is that of the masturbation incident, which plunges the very new couple into their first disagreement.
Overall, it is a beautiful film that draws its strengths from the reality of the loneliness of modern life, as well as the beauty of some good, old-fashioned Godardian cinematography. I look forward to seeing what Holdridge has to offer up in the future.