PRETEND WE’RE KISSING – directed by Matt Sadowski – SPOILERS ⁓
Benny
This is the story of Benny (Dov Tiefenbach), a man who reluctantly shares his living space with a financially challenged childhood friend (Autumn, played by Zoë Kravitz) with whom he has nothing in common. Every day he buys lemons from a grocery store near his home, and chats with a lovely clerk named Lily (Loretta Yu).
Benny and Autumn
One evening, at a Rural Alberta Advantage concert, Benny spots Jordan (Tommie-Amber Pirie), whom he correctly assumes to be at least superficially interested in him. We hear his thoughts over the music. “Why did I come here alone? Only losers go to concerts by themselves. Stop it. Autumn would tell me to stop calling myself a loser. I want to be more confident. I want to stop thinking so much. I want to fall in love…Think of something to say, something clever. Oh God, she’s really cute, okay. Just keep dancing. Look at her. Okay, know go over and talk to her. Go bump into her and apologize. That’s your in. Oh God, I’m so nervous.”
Jordan runs into Benny on Markham Street the day after the concert. An Honest Ed’s sign in the background warns “Come in and Get Lost”
He does nothing. When he wakes the next morning, Autumn is searching Craigslist on a laptop in his bedroom. She is naked and announces that she is suddenly a nudist. Benney doesn’t believe that, but tells her about what happened at the concert anyway. “Stop being a Benny,” she tells him. “Allow yourself to be yourself.”
The following day he runs into Jordan again while putting up posters for another concert. (Benny designs and distributes such posters for a living, so his being at the rock concert was likely business-related.) They go to a jazz club where it quickly becomes apparent to everyone except the two of them that they are completely incompatible. Jordan asks him if he would like a Quick Fuck (meaning the drink).
The drink is a layered shot. First the Kahlua goes in (it’s denser because of its high sugar content), then the Midori, and finally the Irish cream. The effect is primarily a visual one and the ingredients, like Benny and Jordan, do not mix. (Benny is definitely the Kahlua in this metaphor.) He washes the taste away with a sip of Jordan’s Caesar (which he suggested for her and was the drink he would normally have ordered).
Benny at the Cameron House on Open Mic Night
Benny’s encounters with Jordan are like the dates Alvy Singer had after Annie Hall left. They have sex for the first time after they miss the last ferry and are stranded on the Toronto Islands overnight. They get rained on. Benny is the only one who thinks it is romantic. Later, Jordan and Benny are at an outdoor party of some sort when Jordan has to pee. She pulls Benny into a relatively isolated area, squats and tells him: “Pretend we’re kissing.”
It might not be significant that the address of Benny’s building is 730 (street unknown); Jordan’s house number is 1126; and the digits of both numbers add up to 10. But Autumn would think it was.
Loretta Yu as Lily — Yu will be Officer Miller in Brayden DeMorest-Purdy‘s upcoming found footage horror anthology ‘Encryption’
When their final date ends in a disastrously premature ejaculation, Jordan at last realizes that Benny is not what she’s looking for, and breaks up with him. Benny has no such epiphany, and declines her offer to be “friends”.
Did I mention the cute clerk named Lily at the produce store near where Benny lives, and where he buys his lemons? Lily is in the process of learning to speak English, and is always asking Benny to explain a word to her. (One suspects her English is better than she lets on, and that she is covertly flirting with our hero.) After the Jordan disaster, she asks him for the meaning of the word “date”. And yes, he finally does ask her out. We never do find out what he does with the lemons.
‘You’ve changed’, the sign on the building across the street tells Benny as he hangs posters for Open Mic Night along Queens Quay.
Rose & Sons Deli, where Benny and Jordan have breakfast, has closed. The location is now Chilliy Pepper Tacos. Honest Ed’s closed its doors in 2016, and that location is now occupied by condominiums.
Director Matt Sadowski told Emma Wilkinson of Take One: “I started writing the film after I had fallen in love (with who ended up being my wife), and it felt totally different. I looked back at my failed relationships and started to realize how being so stuck in my own head was what stood in my way of what I wanted, which is essentially Benny’s problem. The film certainly isn’t a biopic, but a lot of it is based on situations I found myself in…The difficult thing about my film is that it walks like rom-com but it doesn’t talk like one. And that I have a romantic lead who you either really identify with personally, or who you want to throttle.”
** — Revised. Originally published 8 February 2016