The Inside Scoop on "The Kiss"

A very big thank you to Kari for unearthing this charming NY Times article, and to IMDB poster helloeeze who originally shared the article. This is one big "awwww" read (swoon-o-metre alert - so don't say I didn't warn you ;), and make sure you pop over to the NY Times and read the full article, it's gorgeous. It's so refreshing to read about McAvoy; so talented and yet so humble and unspoiled.

“James is not somebody who’s going to get his head turned,” the director Julian Jarrold said.

“He’s thoughtful about what he wants to do next.” Mr. Jarrold, who made “Becoming Jane,” said he had wanted to work with Mr. McAvoy again after directing him in a mini-series based on the Zadie Smith novel “White Teeth” five years ago. “It was quite a small role, but he shone out,” Mr. Jarrold said. “He’ll be around a long, long time.”

Mr. Jarrold praised Mr. McAvoy for bringing something extra to the party, an inspired flourish that bolsters a scene. “He gave me a lot of options,” Mr. Jarrold said. “And these were always in service of the story — not the things some stars suggest to make themselves look good.”

In “Becoming Jane,” there is a scene that both men call simply the Kiss.

The movie concerns a putative romance between a 20-year-old Jane Austen, played by Ms. Hathaway, and Mr. McAvoy’s character, a worldly Irish law student named Tom Lefroy. While there are other kisses in the movie — as you can only hope there were in Austen’s short life — this is the first.

The scene needs to pack a punch, and it does, not least because it’s she who kisses him, boldly and deliberately after weeks of wary distrust. But his response caps the moment: In one of those small, eloquent gestures that are a signature of Mr. McAvoy’s work, he draws back slightly, as if not daring to believe what just happened, and, seeing that she meant it, his eyes fill with amazed joy. A perfectly executed impulse — he did it on only one of the takes — it creates a second of tension that underscores each lover’s vulnerability and seals the scene in memory.

Not all Mr. McAvoy’s gestures are small. “Julian was the first guy who’d let me be funny if I wanted to be funny,” he said. “I didn’t like the script, I was afraid Lefroy would be too Darcy, and he said I could play with that image, and that interested me.”

Pic 1: Jane & Tom from: Rotten Tomatoes

Pic 2: The Kiss from: Tiscali