“We’re inviting total insanity into our house!” ejaculates the lovelorn, broke, and creatively blocked Wilson early on In Search Of A Midnight Kiss.  His roommate, you see, has just proposed that Wilson place a Craigslist ad seeking a New Year’s Eve date—and Wilson knows full well what kind of responses he’s likely to get.  As it turns out, he’s mostly right, as director Alex Holdridge’s mostly autobiographical tale of a rarely-seen side of L.A. plays out like a cross between Barfly, Something Wild, and a Kevin Smith film.

And with that setup, be warned that watching this movie is itself something akin to inviting insanity into your presence—and then being asked not to pass judgment on that insanity.

When we first meet Wilson, he’s photoshopping a woman’s face onto another woman’s nude body—and when he gets it looking realistic enough, he, uh, gets to work—only to have his roommate Jacob (and Jacob’s gal Min, whose digitized face has, uh, inspired Wilson) catch him with his shorts around his ankles and his hands erstwhile occupied.  Jacob, of course, finds the incident hysterical, and Min thinks it’s “sweet” that Wilson was fantasizing about her in that fashion.

At this point, I was thinking: So… this is the kind of film where women find porn fantasy flattering, and men find it pure entertainment, eh?

Well, yes; and no.  That’s certainly the story’s starting point, and Wilson’s hardly repentant shame at being caught begs the more prudish and judgmental amongst us (and that would be me, I guess) to be repulsed by these hedonists.

As the story progresses, however, and as we get to know Wilson better—and particularly as we get to know Wilson’s blind date, Vivian—we see that the film works as something of a confessional.  Everyone, after all, has done things they’d just as soon no one ever knew about; but it’s only at the point of learning those things about people—without passing judgment—that you can say you truly know them.  And to the extent that we can know characters through film, I really did feel like I got to know Wilson and Vivian inside and out by the time New Year’s Day arrived—which is a credit both to Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds as the pair, and to Holdridge’s script and direction.  Plus, I actually liked spending time with them… mostly.  Wilson and Viv are a lot like people I’ve both known and been—and loved.  And Holdridge’s film holds out hope for their maturity and happiness.

We also get to know Jacob and Min a lot better, too, and we discover that the film takes a somewhat dimmer (if still not judgmental) view of those two.  Jacob, after all, is the source of all sorts of vulgar wisdom.  “Your nutsack,” he cautioning Wilson about dating illegal immigrants in one of his more printable bon mots, “is filled with green cards.”  Much of the dialogue feels like one of the talkier parts of a Tarantino film crossed with a Judd Apatow flick.

And that makes a certain kind of sense, because this is a film about the dark side of L.A., and about the need to “embrace the pain” of the city.  “L.A. is where love comes to die,” observes Holdridge’s alter ego at one point.  As his film presents it, the town is full of people who have put love and real living on hold in order to pursue their careers; and what exactly would you expect of a city that has put a permanent moratorium on real love?

Some films—such as Garden Party—seem to suggest that people love L.A. precisely because of its decadence; Midnight Kiss, however, seems to say that people love the city despite the decadence.  That’s an improvement, I guess.

But that’s still not much of a recommendation.  I’ve never been fond of the “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” mentality, or of Bourbon Street bacchanalia—and I’ve seen my share of both.  These are not cities in which to raise children, nor in which to nurture mature adult relationships.

And now, thanks to Midnight Kiss—the kind and quality of film a young Jim Jarmusch might have made about L.A., had the inclination struck him—I think I can add L.A. to my list of what are, for all intents and purposes, contemporary America’s frontier towns, places where people will endure just about anything for the lure of big bucks and fame.  You can understand why people would want to visit; but why would anyone want to stay?  And that’s a good metaphor for my experience with Midnight Kiss.

I guess I should be thankful that, up until recently, I’ve only seen the glitzy side of Tinsel Town.  Between this film, Baghead, Chris & Don, and Hollywood Dreams, I’ve just about had my fill of late. 

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss is unrated—but this is the kind of stuff that’s drawing an R these days.  If I had my druthers, it’d be NC-17.  Thoughtless parents drag toddlers to R-rated stuff all the time, and it’s silly that our culture thinks that’s okay.  Kids simply don’t have any business seeing films like this, under any circumstances.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of In Search Of A Midnight Kiss.