Add to playlistLiebesfilm is an ironic attack on one of the most tenacious Hollywood clichés – the film kiss. A brief shot of mouths approaching one another is shown 522 times, without the kiss ever actually taking place; instead the tempo of the encounter is steadily increased. The excessive repetition of the theme destroys the “happy clarity” (Roland Barthes) inherent to the myth of the “film kiss”. (Gabriele Jutz)
Tscherkassky liberates the kiss from its conventional context of the romantic genre; the gesture is reduced to a matter of pure rhythm. (...) Outside the symbolic grid of a narrative, the film behaves like a machine gone berserk that turns against its creator – this is where the painful redundancy begins that provoked an audience to storm the projector booth. (Michael Palm)
