Mainlining Queer Cinema. (Sapphic Screen).

Publication: Curve

Publication Date: 01-APR-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Curve Magazine, Outspoken Enterprises, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 863-6538

KISSING JESSICA STEIN

Fox Searchlight Pictures

http://216.133.243.67

Remember the rampant celebration of "Lipstick Lesbian" pop culture in the early 1990s? Well, get ready, girls -- here we go again. The mainstream film industry is tossing the lesbian, and blending lipstick shades for some gender-bending comedy that, well, isn't.

Kissing Jessica Stein is a joint project from writers-actors Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen (who reprise the roles they created for the theater) and director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. The film opens with Jessica's mother trying to hook her up with eligible men at Temple. Jessica's brother has just announced his engagement, so guess which excessively neurotic, chronically single young woman (Westfeldt) is feeling the pull to get a man -- quick?

After a series of stereotypically horrid man-dates (laugh track, please), Jessica's interest is piqued by a particularly beguiling personal ad. The hitch? It's in the women-seeking-women section.

Meet Helen (Jeurgensen), a hypersexual straight girl looking for a new thrill -- when we meet her, she's somewhere...

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