In Search of a Midnight Kiss.

"From Sunset Boulevard to Mulholland Drive and beyond, most movies revolving around Hollywood hopefuls portray the greater Los Angeles area as a soulless cesspool into which the hordes can't help but sink," writes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE. "But in his Tinseltown-set feature In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Alex Holdridge reimagines LA as a place of renewal and unsung beauty: Skyline shots inclusive of freeway traffic, graphic compositions incorporating the city's variegated architecture, and even the Hollywood sign shrouded by smoggy haze are lovingly lensed in stark black-and-white in obvious homage to Woody Allen's Manhattan (though this hipster kid on the block scores his images to the indie rock of Shearwater rather than Gershwin)."

Updated through 8/5.

"Holdridge's film oscillates wildly between low-key romantic comedy and antic slapstick and doesn't always hit the mark, but it has charm to burn, as well as a welcome eye for the timeless in a rapidly changing metropolis," writes the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas.

"To praise the beauty of this film," argues Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, "is not enough; what lends it tension is that it's wrapped around people for whom beauty is at best an anachronism and at worst an embarrassing joke, like gracious conduct or any hint of duty or service - all the stuff that belongs to big-studio cinema, with its superheroes and stuck-up guys in period costume. It is as if Vivian [Sara Simmonds] and Wilson [Scoot McNairy] know they are stranded in a good-looking movie and want to bluster their way out."

"If Mr Holdridge belongs to any school of filmmaking, it is the Austin, Texas, school of Richard Linklater, he of Slacker (1991), Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), SubUrbia (1997) and Before Sunset (2004)," suggests Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer. "Mr Linklater's and Mr Holdridge's are the types of romantic comedy that can spend an entire film on a single date, as if a chance encounter can change one's whole existence, which often, if not always, happens in real life as well."

"Holdridge has taken the clumsy, true-to-life qualities of [Andrew] Bujalski's films and thrown in a little endearing Miranda July for good measure," suggests Mimi Luse in the L Magazine.

Eric Kohn profiles Hildridge for indieWIRE.

Update, 7/31: "Profane, hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking, Alex Holdridge's black-and-white feature In Search of a Midnight Kiss has a gutter purity that makes you root for it all the way and forgive its patches of ultra-indie awkwardness," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Its plot is one that Judd Apatow could use, and probably will: A lovelorn video store geek, not lacking in a certain dissolute charm, tries to find a last-minute New Year's Eve date via Craigslist and winds up circling the drain of existence - or roaming downtown Los Angeles, which is roughly the same thing - with a pill-popping, chain-smoking blonde whose hysterical redneck boyfriend keeps calling every five minutes. A hit at last year's Tribeca Film Festival that has been making the film festival rounds ever since, In Search of a Midnight Kiss is both more delicate and more ruthless than that premise suggests."

Updates, 8/1: "[W]hile In Search of a Midnight Kiss has its derivative moments along with awkward patches - the inelegantly shaped climax tries to force uninteresting parallels between the two central couples - it manages the difficult task of creating a sustained, plausible and inviting world," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "That part of this world has been formed by other movies is to be expected. Mr Holdridge, after all, is a young filmmaker living and working in Los Angeles who, much like Wilson, is navigating one tough town."

"As long as it sticks to being a visually stunning love letter to the much-maligned city, an inverse of the LA segment of Annie Hall, a filmic rehab from City of Quartz to a city of romantic fantasy - I can totally get on board with it," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "It's when the actors open their mouths that I start to have a problem."

"[B]ehind the serendipity, the film's dull, graceless storytelling deflates any prospect of a magical night," writes Nicolas Rapold in the New York Sun.

"Derivativeness, of course, need not be fatal, and the first-time director's portrait of solitude negated and desperate longing fulfilled - strengthened by lovely Manhattan-ish black-and-white cinematography of Los Angeles, here cast as a barren wonderland fit for lonely souls - boasts an endearingly idiosyncratic, unfussy vibe," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

"In Search of a Midnight Kiss shows enough flashes of brightness that its more conventional business is all the more dispiriting," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club.

Update, 8/5: Stephen Saito talks with Holdrige for IFC.

Posted by dwhudson at July 30, 2008 11:57 AM