Hipsters. LA. Downtown. Smog. Lovelifes lurching from the vacuous to the fatuous. Sound engaging? Well, baby, think twice. You would be hard pressed to find a stronger piece of corroborating evidence to Werner Herzog's assertion that in this day and age any would-be film maker has no excuse but to get out there and make their film than this minor cinematic miracle.
Such is the wondrous aperture afforded by digital technologies, young ingenues can now construct virtuoso narrative eye-smack with a few deft clicks on an online editing suite, having collated their image bank on their Nikon digi-76. Or whatever. One thinks of the autodidact Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, formulated entirely using iMovie software on his Mac. Now enter stage right Alex Holdridge with his first feature, In Search of Midnight Kiss, filmed on digi-cam in a hazy swirl of monochrome., taking in the art-deco delights of downtown LA.
Taking its cues from Godard's avenues de Paris in the street-smart A Bout De Souffle and the loquacious meanderings of Richard Linklater's diptych of Before Sunset and Before Sunrise, set in Paris (again) and Vienna respectively (the co-Texan Holdridge enjoys Linklater's guiding hand as a producer here), Holdridge's film is a whip-snapping, lippy, love-lorn wounded animal of movie that manages to reach that romantic comedy promised land of being genuinely touching and piss-funny. There is one minor false-step into melodrama moronicness towards the close but it is more than forgiveable given the lightness of touch and the cracking swearing earlier on. Not to mention one of the most screamingly (masturbatory) funny opening scenes for ages.
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