Kiss Me António da Cunha Telles Portugal 2004
In his introduction to the film, director António da Cunha Telles criticised Portuguese cinema for being too intellectual and too abstract, thus intimating that his film Kiss Me was intended to be the opposite of over erudition. During his speech I took that to mean it was supposed to be popular (in the best sense of the word) and punchy rather than spindly. During the achingly long two hours that followed I came to think, unfortunately, that all he meant ultimately was that Kiss Me was a little lacking in intelligence.
Kiss Me is the story of Laura, a young woman in a small village who is obliged to marry the man who has made her pregnant. Predictably he turns out to be a brute. She absconds, leaving her son behind, although the film supplies no reason for this abandonment. She heads to the Algarve, and her aunt’s house. Her Aunt had previously lived in America, only returning once her husband had died. She introduces Laura to the delights of Martini (whose makers part financed the film) and Hollywood cinema (who didn’t, and presumably don’t much care one way or the other). Laura gradually morphs into a platinum-copy of her new-found hero Marilyn Monroe. She falls for a local (and very married) wide-boy, strings along the local school teacher (a broken former political prisoner) until he commits suicide, and then moves in with her former boss. Apparently Kiss Me is supposed to comment on the complexities of womanhood, but I didn’t see this at all. Portuguese author José Cardoso Pires once said something to the effect that ‘without myths, we die’. I can understand this woman’s urge to recreate herself as a myth, but there seems to be nothing at stake within her self-creation as a pocket-size Marilyn. At points in Kiss Me there are hints that some sort of critique of the Marilyn myth will be made - as when Laura watches the report of Monroe’s death on television and receives a copy of Warhol’s celebrated print of Monroe. However, instead of using Warhol’s view of fame as a trigger to making some sort of point, the film unfortunately limits itself to merely showing the picture’s gaudy colours.
Indeed, what point Kiss Me as a whole is supposed to convey is hard to say. Certainly small-town Portugal is portrayed as mean-spirited to the point of malevolence and the secret police are shown to have been vile. So far, so many barrel-bound fish cinematically shot. The depiction of Laura as an incarnation of Marilyn could have been interesting, but ultimately represents a missed opportunity. The real Marilyn’s story is a fascinating, if desolate one. The most beautiful, heart-breaking tale, of the woman all women wanted to be and who all men wanted to be with (pace Raymond Chandler), but who ultimately died alone and embittered, abused and doped up on barbiturates. Sex appeal, especially in a small town, could be compared to a bee’s sting: once used it can be uncomfortable for the victim and fatal for the bee. However, in Kiss Me Laura never seems to suffer from using her feminine wiles. She exploits her boss’s infatuation with her, yet doesn’t alienate either him or her colleagues. Indeed, her boss ends up marrying and protecting her. She plays with the affections of the school teacher, who kills himself in disgust and nobody bats an eye-lid, least of all her. She has an affair with the local wideboy, whose son comes to her and asks her to leave his daddy alone. This affair seems to have no consequences at all. At no point does Laura seem to think about who she is, who she was or who she could be. What is the point?
There is, however, one aspect I found interesting in the film. Da Cunha Telles mentioned in his introduction that in the 50s Portugal was described as a Black and White country. Black because of the economic, political and social situation. White due to the escapatory magic of the big screen. During this time people flocked to see the Hollywood classics. For him, and for the characters of the film, cinema was simply magic. Maybe our generation is cynical, but looking back at the grey, retrograde Portugal of the 50s, perhaps we can see why the Pandora’s box of Americanisation was opened. It is interesting to note that, in her packages to the son Laura left behind, all she sends are toys, tacky objects. Maybe tacky trash is better than dismal pettiness, but it’s not much of a choice. In different contexts, Wim Wenders has dealt with the stakes of Americanisation in a far more deeply reflexive way. Easy to say for somebody from a glib generation who only knows about fascism from comments around the family table, but the impression in Kiss Me is that Portugal jumped from the fire into the frying pan. One particularly telling moment encapsulating this ‘own goal’ occurs at the beginning of the film. Laura, played by one of Portugal’s most beautiful models, is wearing a simple but lovely dress. Her aunt swaps it for a gaudy polka dot number and tells her how beautiful she looks. I was left wishing she hadn’t paid any attention to her aunt at all.
The film is narrated, implausibly by her son, now grown up. At one point he sententiously asks why it was that his mother, desired by so many men, always ended up alone. The viewer is left gagging to shout out the answer "because they all knew she spent her time shagging the married local wideboy up on the cliffs". Worse still is the ending. Kiss Me has a rickety, uninsightful story, bad acting and a boring soundtrack. Portuguese cinema overly academic? Kiss Me is riddled with "homages" to other films, many of which have nothing at all to do with the sort of films Laura is supposed to have fallen for (l’Atalante?) all of which are boastingly listed at the end. Don’t bother!
