PRETEND WE’RE KISSING (Matt Sadowski). 84 minutes. Opens Friday (April 3). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
Where to watch: iTunes
Matt Sadowski‘s Pretend We’re Kissing is a modest Toronto romance that would look an awful lot better if it weren’t following so closely behind The F Word, which made light work of all of the things Sadowski’s film struggles to sell.
Benny (Dov Tiefenbach) is a street posterer whose romantic ambitions are crippled by self-doubt – and by his sense of responsibility for the weird friend (Zoë Kravitz) who’s been staying with him for a year.
When he meets the pleasant Jordan (Tommie-Amber Pirie), Benny is smitten – and she seems to like him back – but his neuroses keep him from making a move.
Their courtship unfolds over an intense couple of days, and while writer/director Sadowski has some really interesting ideas about connections and compatibility, they’re undermined by the lack of chemistry between the leads. It also doesn’t help that Tiefenbach seems about a decade too old to be playing a character like Benny.
I’ll allow that the lack of chemistry may well be the entire point of Pretend We’re Kissing, but it’s not executed in an engaging or illuminating way. It just hangs there while everyone does their best to steer around it.
