Don’t ask…do tell

May 16, 9:25 PMPhiladelphia Movie ExaminerWilliam Sternman

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Back in the day, the asexual “sex comedies” starring Doris Day were driven by this burning question: Will she (or won’t she) lose her precious virginity to Rock Hudson…or Cary Grant…or Clark Gable? Since these movies were made before the sexual revolution, you already knew as you bought your popcorn that Doris would come through her trial by fire intact (so to speak). But you still couldn’t help hoping that just this once, please, she wouldn‘t. Yet even if she didn‘t, no one would ever be allowed to talk about it, not in the movie at any rate. (That’s why when Otto Preminger broke through the sound barrier by letting the actors in The Moon Is Blue, 1953, actually come right out, brazen as brass, with such words as “virgin” and “pregnant,” the San Andreas fault was born.)

In our own more liberated times (he wrote with nary a hint of irony), we sometimes seem more interested in talking about it than actually doing it. At least that’s the case with Shall We Kiss? (Un baiser s'il vous plaît, 2007), written and directed by Emmanuel Mouret, who is also one of the stars. There was a time (when Doris was fighting the battle of the bump) when “French movie” (who knew to call them “films” back then?) meant racy, risqué, forbidden, blue, dirty—the high-school boys’ delight. In this particular French movie, however, they just talk about it, on and on and on, until what for me was a foregone conclusion (just like Doris’s figurative chastity belt). The “it” that they talk so much about, incidentally, isn’t even the sex act itself, but the dangers of kissing. 

Mon dieu, how the French movie has fallen!

Here’s the playbook:

While visiting in Nantes, Émilie (Julie Gayet) asks Gabriel (Michaël Cohen) for directions. One thing leads to another (don‘t get ahead of me now), they have drinks together, and when all the bars close (is this France or Philadelphia?), they go to her hotel room for a nightcap. Since they’ll never see each other again (they haven’t even given their real names), Gabriel suggests that they part with a friendly kiss. Surely, there can’t be anything wrong with that? 

Sacre bleu! You don’t know! A friend (Virginie Ledoyen) of Émilie’s exchanged an innocent kiss to help out a dear friend (Mouret)—and, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, their lives were never the same. And every time they tried to solve their problems, they only got worse. 

This voiceover-narrated flashback constitutes practically the entire movie. 

This is the stuff of sitcoms, not adult films, or even “French movies.” It’s too lethargic to be farce and too phlegmatic to be comedy. The characters are so vacuous, enervated and clueless that it’s hard to take them seriously or even care what happens to them, although they take themselves very seriously indeed. Watching them is like watching a mouse running endlessly around in a maze, trying to find a way out. You want to end its misery (and your own) by picking it up and setting it free. After 96 minutes, I was finally set free. Oh, happy rodent!

Another comparison now comes to mind. Shall We Kiss? reminds me of what used to called—and this, of course, also applies to those Doris Day flicks—a “shaggy dog” story, a joke that goes on and on, and if it has a punch line, it has nothing to do with what went before it. It’s utterly pointless. Like a bad pun, it always evokes groans.

I want to clarify my statement that I found the ending of this particular shaggy-dog story a foregone conclusion. Like the final shot of The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), the very ambiguity of the finale of Shall We Kiss? lets you project on to it whatever you like. It confirms your expectations.

Although Shall We Kiss? is certainly an appropriate title, I’d like to suggest another: Much Ado About Nothing Much.