“For her short video “First Kiss,” director Tatia Pilieva asked 20 strangers to convene in a blank room, pair up with one another, then kiss for the first time in front of her camera. The result looks like real-life romance, sped up to an intoxicating pace: The kissers circle each other awkwardly at first, making fumbling small talk, sneaking looks at Pilieva, and erupting into giggles. But once they’ve locked lips, they suddenly appear intimate, sexy, even compassionate toward each other. Watching the video will warm your cold, unfeeling heart—until you get to the credits, at which point it will return to its rightfully frozen state.
“It’s cute to see the strangers be all hesitant at first (as most sane and sober people would be!) but once they go for it, it’s like watching fireworks, man (as barf-fully cheesy as that sounds),” Gizmodo’s Casey Chan writes, filing the video under the tag “beautiful” in a post that has racked up more than 4 million hits since last night and is still climbing. “It’s unexpectedly touching, like watching a documentary turn into a romantic comedy that doesn’t suck.”
Actually, it’s an advertisement for clothes, and most of these strangers are professional performers who are experienced in acting out love, sex, and intimacy for crowds. The cast includes models Natalia Bonifacci, Ingrid Schram, and Langley Fox (daughter of actress Mariel Hemingway and sister of model Dree); musicians Z Berg of The Like, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Justin Kennedy of Army Navy, singer Nicole Simone, and singer-actress Soko (who also performed the melancholy indie music that accompanies the short); and actors Karim Saleh, Matthew Carey, Jill Larson, Corby Griesenbeck, Elisabetta Tedla, Luke Cook, and Marianna Palka.”* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian break it down.
*Read more here from Amanda Hess / Slate:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/11/first_kiss_video_tatia_pilieva_films_strangers_who_are_also_actors_models.html