One More Kiss
UK 1999
Reviewed by Edward Lawrenson
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
After considering suicide in present-day New York, terminally ill Sarah returns to her hometown of Berwick-upon-Tweed. On arriving, she visits her old flame Sam, now married to Charlotte, and asks him if he'll spend some time with her before she dies. She then returns to the house she grew up in and breaks the news to her father Frank.
Frank encourages Sarah to attend a cancer support group. There she meets Jude, a 24-year-old fellow sufferer. Sarah also finds Frank's old love letters which detail a relationship he had with a New York jazz singer named Peggy before he met Sarah's late mother. Sam has agreed to spend time with Sarah, despite Charlotte's reluctance. As they go skydiving, kite flying and walking together, Sam's fondness for Sarah is rekindled. Sarah is distraught when she hears Jude has killed himself. Frank finds a doctor in Edinburgh who proposes a cure for Sarah; Sarah agrees to undergo surgery, only if Frank promises to call Peggy. The night before the operation, she visits Sam, whose devotion to her is making Charlotte increasingly jealous. They spend the night together. Sarah's operation is not a success and she dies. After her funeral, Frank travels to New York and telephones Peggy.
Review
In her prerecorded videotaped address to the mourners at her own funeral, an eerily perky Sarah asks, "I'm not sad, so why should you be?" The comment is for her guests, but it might equally be directed to the audience of One More Kiss. Just as Sarah tries to keep her spirits up in her final months, director Vadim Jean is careful to avoid upsetting us too much. So as well as facing cancer, Sarah throws herself into a feelgood romance with ex-flame Sam, manages to cheer up her terminally dour father Frank and provides sage council to fellow cancer sufferer Jude. It's almost as if Jean is trying to distract us with these subplots to stop his film from seeming too morbid; it would work were it not for the fact that Sarah confronts her illness with such indomitable, heroic forbearance. "I'm Sarah," she introduces herself to a cancer support group, "I've got cancer. Bummer."
But you can't help thinking Jean has misjudged something. Since directing the low-budget comedy Leon the Pig Farmer, he's developed a knack for making the most from limited resources - demonstrated here by his use of a Strauss waltz over a car-wash scene, which gives the simplest of set-ups a charm all of its own. But with One More Kiss, he seems intimidated by the potential for excess lurking in debut screenwriter Suzie Halewood's script. So Sarah's seemingly blithe and no-nonsense approach to her impending death (she meticulously works out the menu for her funeral) at times borders on the perverse, a strange throwback to the stilted, stiff-upper-lip restraint that British cinema supposedly did away with years ago.
A sneaking suspicion arises that Jean has hatched the fail-safe equation - dying young woman plus doomed romance equals an unstoppable flood of tears - but hasn't done much else to make his drama emotionally involving. His is a tearjerker which doesn't work for its tears, but earns them through emotional blackmail. Sarah and Sam's scenes together - long walks by the beach, cliff-top kite flying - are saccharine and cursory. But for us not to be moved by Sarah's plight would be to align ourselves with Sam's wife Charlotte, a woman whose frustration with Sam's afternoon jaunts with Sarah makes her the jealous villain of the piece. In one scene, she even spits at Sarah in the street, like a catty soap-opera diva.
That said, there are moments in the film which cut through the romantic-weepy banalities to reveal a starker, braver, necessarily bleaker film about terminal patients coping with their condition, building on a public awareness such true-life sufferers as Ruth Picardie and John Diamond have created through their newspaper columns. Danny Nussbaum's performance as the justifiably embittered 24-year-old Jude is a particular revelation: when told by a platitudinous therapist that he owns his cancer, not vice versa, he retorts, "In that case I would sell it." And it's Sarah's learning of his suicide that provides the film its most unsettling moment: sitting alone on her bed she lets rip with a terrified, anguished howl of pain. For once, watching the naked emotion of Valerie Edmond's performance, we're made to consider things other than menu-planning and skydiving.
Credits
- Director
- Vadim Jean
- Producers
- Vadim Jean
- Paul Brooks
- Screenplay
- Suzie Halewood
- Director of Photography
- Mike Fox
- Editor
- Joe McNally
- Production Designer
- Simon Hicks
- Music
- David A. Hughes
- John Murphy
- ©One More Kiss Ltd.
- Production Companies
- Mob Films presents in association with Jam Pictures and Freewheel International
- Developed by Metrodome/The European Script Fund
- Executive Producers
- Sara Giles
- Derek Roy
- Co-producers
- Jane Walmsley
- Michael Braham
- Line Producers
- Ian Sharples
- New York Unit:
- Jon Marcus
- Co-associate Producers
- Bob Curry
- Melissa Longley
- Production Manager
- Natalie Sinclair
- Location Manager
- New York Unit:
- Steve Carroll
- Script Supervisor
- Shelly Kiely
- Casting Director
- Carl Proctor
- Digital Montage Photography
- Bob Willingham
- Aerial Cameraman
- Danny Branston
- Art Director
- Louise Bedford
- Costume Designer
- Linda Brooker
- Hair/Make-up
- Colette King
- Titles/Opticals
- Cine Image
- Musicians
- Andrew Price
- Greg Francis
- Nigel Jay
- Pam Jay
- Glenn James
- Alison Fletcher
- Rob Wild
- Andrew Scrivener
- Mike Dale
- Ruth Ferreira
- Susan Williamson
- Norman Brown
- Gerard Ryan
- David A. Hughes
- John Murphy
- Lead Violinist
- Andrew Price
- Score Arrangers
- David A. Hughes
- John Murphy
- Greg Francis
- Music Supervisor
- Don Gallacher
- Additional Score Engineering
- Dave Buchannan
- Soundtrack
- "How about You", "You Fascinating You" arranged by Greg Francis, performed by Connie Lush; "Through the Rain" by/performed by Gavin Clarke; "Hey Boy! Hey Girl!" by J. Thomas, Oscar McLollie, performed by Louis Prima; "Roses from the South" by Johann Strauss, performed by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; "Caruso" by Lucio Dalla, performed by Julian Jensen; "Ave Maria" performed by Slava; "Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Collins Foster, performed by James Cosmo; "Where Do You Go to My Lovely" by/performed by Peter Sarstedt; "Amour ti vieta" by Giordem, performed by Tito Beltrán; "Swimmers" by Matthew Nelson, Simon Nelson, performed by Milo
- Sound Recordists
- Michael Lax
- Tommy Hair
- Dubbing Mixer
- Tim Alban
- Sound Editor
- Ian Wilson
- Dialogue Editor
- Keith Tunney
- Foley
- Artists:
- Jack Stew
- Felicity Cottrell
- Aerial Co-ordinators
- New York Unit:
- Bill Richards
- Video and Film Flyers
- Cast
- Gerard Butler
- Sam
- James Cosmo
- Frank
- Valerie Edmond
- Sarah
- Valerie Gogan
- Charlotte
- Carl Proctor
- Barry
- Danny Nussbaum
- Jude
- Dilys Miller
- Mary
- Ron Guthrie
- Robin
- Michael Murray
- market stall holder
- Oscar Fullane
- Simon Tickner
- chefs
- Lori Manningham
- Michael Angello, Frank's dog
- Hugh Wilson
- Frank's false teeth
- Robin Calloway
- speaking voice of Shirley
- Andrew Townley
- Doctor Frith
- Colette King
- Nurse King
- Molly Maher
- young Sarah
- Julian Jensen
- opera singer
- Kim Hicks
- Tim Francis
- opera lovers on stage
- Nigel Pegram
- opera buff
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Metrodome Distribution Ltd
- 9,206 feet
- 102 minutes 18 seconds
- Dolby Stereo
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor Ltd
- Anamorphic [Panavision]