Just a Kiss

Marisa Tomei turns in a blitzkrieg performance.

This small-scale film isn't for all tastes. But veterans of the dating wars will smirk uneasily at the film's nightmare versions of everyday sex-in-the-city misadventures.

Stevens has a keen sense of the absurd, but the whole thing is too forced - and his use of "rotomation" (last used in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life") to give a Timothy Leary-swirl to key dramatic moments winds up looking incongruous.

What a mess.

It's coherent, well shot, and tartly acted, but it wears you down like a dinner guest showing off his doctorate.

The best thing you can say about Just a Kiss is that it isn't every romantic comedy that throws in suicide, bondage and a plane crash in between all the bed hopping.

A convoluted writing exercise gone horribly wrong.