One Kiss

Antonio is a star basketball player on his high-school team, but that doesn't mean he's popular by any means. Soft-spoken, awkward, and still grieving over his older brother's death, he's excluded from his teammates and considered dumb. Blu, who has a reputation for her sexual exploits, defiantly rides her scooter past graffiti labeling her a "slut," and hurries to the mailbox each afternoon to grab her writer mother's rejection letters before she sees them. Lorenzo, new in town as well as newly adopted, relies on his extravagant sense of fashion and elaborate imagination to distract him from the bullies at school who mercilessly tease him for his homosexuality. These three teenagers form a friendship and a means of defense against the closed-minded bullies who constantly berate them, but their closeness to each other eventually comes at a tragic price. Reminiscent of 1960s New Wave forerunners like Truffaut's Jules et Jim and Godard's Bande a parte, One Kiss is a story of outsider friendship, the limits of imagination, and the consequence of honesty. (Seattle International Film Festival)