Maybe this would be better saved for Valentine’s day, but as someone recently pointed it out to me, I feel compelled to offer this to you. One of Jandy’s first Finite Focus posts involved Ms. Naomi Watts auditioning for a soapy-TV role within the nightmare that is Mulholland Dr. That scene is pretty special because it is so multi-layered in terms of acting chops. First Watts has to play the bubbly Betty Elms and then she has to play Betty acting how she feels would be best to get the role. In the same spirit, but with markedly less time for character development than a feature film, Pierre-Olivier Mornas’ 16mm short film from 11 years ago, On S’Embrasse? (Can We Kiss?) does this in a similar way. One that, as David Mamet would say, is both inevitable and surprising. It has the romance of a random encounter in a French café, and yet has a particularly acerbic irony to the whole affair. Damn, they should have shoehorned this into Paris Je T’aime despite it preceding that anthology by about a decade.
Have a look.
(4/5)
