In Search of a Midnight Kiss (Alex Holdridge, 2007)

A 29-year-old jobless slacker is persuaded by his friends to place a personal ad in the hope that he might nit have to spend New Year alone. The date that results from this, with strong echoes of Linklater's Before Sunrise, duly involves a lot of talking about life. And then more talking about life, with whimsical overtones all the way through and a few escapades connected to the woman's possessive ex, and a bittersweet ending to cap it off. This kind of stuff goes down a storm in U.S. indie circles and with the waffling intellectual French tendency too, but less well so if you actually look for substance in a film. Nor does it help that the male lead, as clear a projection of the filmmaker himself as you can imagine, is terminally wet and his 'strong' female counterpart utterly insufferable, at least at the outset. It means well and is mildly amusing in places, but has all the sense of purpose of its diffident main protagonist. Also see Frances Ha.

5/10