Alex Holdridge’s disarming, low-fi romance. By JACOB POWELL.

A ROMANTIC COMEDY light on production gloss and heavy on naturalistic dialogue, writer/director Alex Holdridge’s third feature, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, pushes most of the right buttons. First we meet Wilson (Scoot McNairy), a regular late 20s guy; he’s lonely and had a bad year of it, in terms of work, and a bad half decade of it, in terms of his love life. We are introduced to him as a video store employee who is in synch with his clientele; preferring to mull over some morose romantic movie than actually venture out into the wild and seek it off-screen. The amusing (just post) opening scene finds him caught in a compromising situation when his flatmates return unexpectedly from a trip and from this we learn about the unfortunate stage of life he is in and the friendships he has with these flatmates, Jacob & Min (Brian McGuire & Kathleen Luong) – the apparent picture of a happy couple with – whom he lives.

To help keep their friend from another morbidly depressing New Year they convince him, against his inclination, to load a personal ad on a singles website. He ends up agreeing to meet with the first girl, Vivian (Sara Simmonds), who calls, though she does seem somewhat highly strung (or strung out). What follows is an endearing, daylong drama that sees them slowly open up to each other, slowly building trust and intimacy – though not without some serious missteps in between. To begin with each of the pair is somewhat wary of the other but Wilson’s level of loneliness and the what-the-hell space he finds himself in make him a little more open and motivated to keep the date going. Vivian, for all her big talk, apparent over-confidence, and appearance of control, oozes fragility and turns out to be in even a worse state than Wilson. His openness and self-deprecating ease slowly win her over and their date ends up going the distance and then some. They roam around the dirty streets of inner city Los Angeles checking out buildings, spend Wilson’s last $100 eating at an Italian restaurant and later, head to a party where Jacob is DJing and has some special plans. Along the way we also get snippets of Wilson’s newly ‘swinging’ mother (Twink Caplan), Vivian’s psychotic, redneck ex-boyfriend Jack (Robert Murphy), and catch up on what Jacob & Min are doing.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss, in tone and feel, reminds of Andrew Bujalski’s 2005 feature Mutual Appreciation. The black and white HD to 35mm print making the city better resembles countless filmic depictions of New York than the usual scenes we see from LA. Devoid of its usual Hollywood gloss, the city resembles something real that people live in and that needs repairs and cleaning, reminiscent of Terry Zwigoff’s LA in Ghost World (2001) though that was in colour. Holdridge combines this visual aesthetic with a nicely put together soundtrack of little-known local bands to create an authentic feeling film worthy of term ‘indie’ in its most positive sense.

Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds bring a natural chemistry to their roles making for natural feeling relationship development throughout the film. It is apparent that most of the principle cast has worked with the director before on one of his earlier features and at least three worked on his previous film Sexless (2003). The sense of ease and connection is evident in the various character interactions and, for the most part, the plot development seems to fit the characters well.

Unfortunately there are a few times when the script lets the film down a little. Occasionally Holdridge seems to overthink his ideas and they come out a little overworked. This is particularly apparent near the start of the film where Brian McGuire struggles to hold his own, coming off a little wooden. This is an area where Mutual Appreciation outshines Holdridge’s effort; Bujalski having an unfaltering grip on the flow and nuance of the speech of urban twenty-somethings. These minor stumbles, however, are more than made up for by the quality of the overall story which has a good balance of humour and more dramatic involvement in its micro setting. Holdridge successfully manages to keep the key interactions and relationship developments feeling natural. He never takes things further than you’d feel they might possibly go on a New Years night out, and yet they’re still engaging to the viewer.

If you’re looking for a low-fi character drama set firmly in the everyday, with believable but affecting romance then you may want to grab a date (maybe a blind date) and swing them along to In Search of a Midnight Kiss and see where things go from there...