Kyss Mig

Alternate English Title: Love Stain / With Every Heartbeat
Release date: July 29, 2011
Director: Alexandra-Therese Keining
Screenplay by: Alexandra-Therese Keining
Cast: Liv Mjönes, Ruth Vega Fernandez, Lena Endre, Krister Henriksson, Joakim Nätterqvist

You find yourself falling in love all over again. The love is intense, you can’t but to dive in to it. But that love becomes a burden when you just got engaged to your long-time boyfriend, and the receiver of your new affection is your future sister.

Kyss Mig is being sold as the Swedish “lesbian” movie of the year. Sure, it’s a story about two women falling in love — something we haven’t seen since Fucking Åmål. Whereas Fucking Åmål dealt with teenage girls figuring out and dealing with their sexualities, Kyss Mig is more about how the love between two mature women can be hard when family is involved.

I do love the fact that the main characters Frida (Mjönes) and Mia (Fernandez) are over 30 years-old, because one would think that at that age, one would know better when coming to love. The issue here is that Frida’s mother (Endre) is marrying Mia’s father (Henriksson). Add to that the fact that Mia just got engaged to her long-time boyfriend Tim (Nätterqvist). However, that becomes minimal when the attraction between Mia and Frida erupts.

At first, Mia is very reluctant, Frida goes all for it. One would think that it has to be because Mia doesn’t know that she is gay, Frida is openly gay and even has a girlfriend. But the movie is not so much about them being gay, not to me at least. I think that the family ties are what makes this movie more interesting. Sure, Mia and Frida are not blood-related, but the fact that they are to become sisters but then fall for each other; I think that people will judge that more than them being gay.

A feature of the movie that I really like is the contrast between the main characters. While Frida is open-minded, soft, openly gay, artistic, a little bit of a free spirit/hippie — Mia is very strict, slightly stiff, her apartment filled with grays, blacks and dark colors. They are really from different worlds and somehow they fall madly in love.

I love the scene when Mia, explaining to her father why she fell for Frida, says that she was to marry Tim because it was expected of her. My heart broke a little there.

However, I feel that the plot could have been worked on a little more. There were some issues growing between Mia and her father, but besides that, the acting in this movie was astonishing. I want to give a huge shout out to Ruth Fernandez. The way she portrayed Mia, with all the anxiety and the tired face — she had this huge bags under her eyes! — in contrast to how she glowed when with Frida, I felt everything she felt on-screen, she acted out through every pore of her face.

I wasn’t blown away by the movie, but I liked it just fine. I appreciate that it portrays the love between two mature women, we need more of these stories on-screen.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

To all our Swedish YAMmies:

Stay tuned! We are going to give away 10 tickets to Kyss Mig, courtesy of Nordic Films.

Julyssa

Music is all I do: I work in music, I write about music, I listen to music.

8 Responses

  1. Joel Burman says:

    Nice review Julili but it feels like a slightly higher grade than your text. I’ll try to win the movie tickets since I’m otherwise waiting for it to be released on DVD.

  2. Ellen says:

    Biljetter?

    Vill sååååå gärna se denna!!!!

  3. amy says:

    I think you should email After Ellen to see more fans from Sweden ;D – also… you went up with your rating! xD

    • Julili says:

      @amy, I gave it a half more cus of the osm acting. I still wish the plot had been more I dunno, I just wish it had been more. I think that I was hoping too much with this movie and it really didn’t live up to my own hype. Doesn’t mean is bad, I just got to carried away I guess.

    • Joel Burman says:

      @amy, come on now with ten or five tickets (if I share with Ellen) I can take my whole family to the film sssshhhhh about the competition. hahaha

  4. Ethylen From So. Calif says:

    I don’t understanding the language but I watched this movie so many times. I really loved it. Welp, the film made 2 years ago but I just watched it 2 weeks ago. Liv and Ruth did a good job… Best movie ever,,, Gooo Swedish……!

    From California

  1. April 28, 2014

    […] speaks for itself. She recently launched Lebox, her own production company, to be able to get Kyss Mig out. Liv is pretty new to me, but she is a veteran in the Swedish movie industry. Kyss Mig is sure […]

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