The Delicate Art of the Grab-and-Kiss

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If the same stuff turned everyone on, then for one thing, the San Fernando Valley’s vibrant porn industry would be a lot less vibrant — as would the world in general. That said, there are maybe some commonalities across the human experience that most people would say, objectively, are pretty hot — as one example, that moment in a great romantic film when one person, overcome with passion, pulls another person towards them for a kiss that feels somehow inevitable, and yet also like a delicious surprise.

It’s a moment I’ve dubbed the “grab-and-kiss” over the years, as a fan of romantic movies in general and this trope in particular. It’s impossible to remember the first one I personally saw, but entire generations have been defined by these moments, whether it be the passion of An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)’s final smooch or The Notebook (2004) creating a devoted legion of Ryan Gosling fans. TV is also rich with these moments, from Jim and Pam on The Office and Logan and Veronica on Veronica Mars; it’s a trope where immediate examples might not come to mind, but you know it as soon as you see it.

And executing one, according to Red, White & Royal Blue director Matthew Lopez, isn’t as easy as you might think.

How a Grab-and-Kiss Is Made

The new Prime Video film Red, White & Royal Blue is an R-rated romantic comedy about an unlikely love affair between the First Son of the United States and a Prince of England. Based on the book by Casey McQuiston, the story begins with Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) being forced to do press together after an embarrassing international incident, in order to prove that they don’t hate each other. Of course, their enforced time together stokes a brimming cauldron of sexual tension that overflows during a big New Year’s party being hosted by Alex.

In the film, Henry ducks out of the party just after midnight, and Alex follows him to find out what’s bothering him. Eventually, Henry gives into long-suppressed temptation, and strides forward to embrace Alex with a grab-and-kiss — capturing the passion that’s been building between them, a textbook example of how powerful the maneuver can be in practice.

It was important for Henry to be the grab-and-kiss-er in this scenario, Lopez says, because “there’s something very striking about a character such as Henry, who has spent up to that point in the film being very buttoned down and seemingly in control of his urges in that moment, losing the ability to control his urges and give into the desire to kiss Alex.”

Plus, there’s the additional context of Henry being literal royalty: “There’s something very sexy and romantic about a prince dropping his guard. And taking things that are old movie tropes and letting two boys do it — that was definitely the romantic gesture that we wanted to go for.”

Of course, on a practical level, the grab-and-kiss has certain practical elements to consider. “The only danger on set was that sometimes [Nicholas Galitzine] would come at [Taylor Zakhar Perez] so forcefully that they would just bang faces. We were really worried about fat lips and bloody noses,” he laughs.

It wasn’t just the passion of the actors that was an issue, but the terrain — according to Lopez, “they were on a slope. So Nick was going downhill.” (Passion with a little help from Newtonian physics.)

On set for this as well as the film’s other, more graphic scenes was intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt, who oversaw shooting the kiss in two different ways: “We had one where Alex is completely taken by surprise and doesn’t respond to the kiss. And then we did Version B, where Alex is taken by surprise and then does respond to the kiss. Because I wasn’t quite sure what was going to work, so I gave myself the option of having both.”

Process-wise, this meant rehearsing both versions and then shooting different angles and framings, which means “those lads kissed easily like 40 or 50 times that night,” Lopez laughs. “There’s nothing like having to kiss someone 40 times in a row to really, really take the allure out of kissing.”

And that’s just what it takes to get it on screen. The context of the grab-and-kiss proves to be equally important.

Why It’s a Challenge

While the grab-and-kiss is the best term I’ve been able to come up with for this maneuver, it’s not my favorite — if only because if you Google the phrase “grab and kiss” today, the search term pulls up very unsexy results. These unsexy results (including phrases like “attempted sexual assault” and “Donald Trump”) do serve as a necessary reminder of how delicate a balance one has to strike with this particular maneuver. As Lopez puts it, “there is a gray area and I think you see it in some older movies, in which they do the grab-and-kiss and it’s icky — it just feels not consensual at all, or very uncomfortable.”

One example of this is a childhood favorite of mine, the 1988 Ron Howard fantasy epic Willow, featuring a romantic subplot between rogue swordfighter Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) and Sorsha (Joanne Whaley), the warrior daughter of the evil queen. What I didn’t remember from childhood is that their first “romantic” interlude features a drugged Madmartigan trying to grab and kiss a first sleeping, and then unwilling, Sorsha. The film is at least conscious of this, though, and there’s a far better grab-and-kiss later in the film, in which Sorsha is the instigator.

The calibration is necessary, though, something which could be difficult in the moment. The grabbing component, especially — the razor’s edge that adds a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of danger, and in some circumstances, a little bit of sexiness.

The majority of the big iconic examples happen to feature heterosexual couples kissing (much like film history itself), from Lauren Bacall gently grabbing Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not to Sanaa Latham and Omar Epps’s embraces in Love & Basketball. However, Red, White & Royal Blue is far from the first queer example of this trope, which includes examples like the 1987 film Maurice, featuring multiple “forbidden” embraces between James Wilby and Rupert Graves.

There’s no formal grab-and-kiss between Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in Bound, but the spirit is certainly there in Violet’s seduction of Corky. And in the case of Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger)’s first big reunion in Brokeback Mountain, it’s a kiss that’s all grabbing, though it’s in line with how the physical aspect of their relationship has up until that point been more like fighting than fucking.

By contrast, the big final kiss at the end of Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days is fascinating to explore, because it technically can be defined as a grab-and-kiss: Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) literally pulls Mace (Angela Bassett) from the backseat of a police car before their lips meet. However, there’s a key step between the grabbing and the kissing — a bit of silent communication that seemingly ends with Mace raising her chin slightly, an unspoken moment of consent. It ends up being a far more tender sequence than you might anticipate, while also still packed with the passion you’ve been waiting for all movie long — making it a slightly unconventional but stellar example of how important calibration can be.

What’s so powerful about the grab-and-kiss is that it’s an embrace with purpose. There’s a backstory to it, usually one involving repressed emotions and deeply held longing. That was the strategy Lopez used with Red, White & Royal Blue, using the scenes leading up to the kiss beneath the tree to emphasize “the pull between them.” (Specifically, Lopez got what he calls his “West Side Story moment” during the New Year’s party, when a crowd dancing to Lil Jon’s “Get Low” does as instructed by the song, leaving a still-standing Henry and Alex to gaze at each other across the dance floor.)

That may be the secret sauce — not the details involved in the actual moment, but everything that’s come before. Watching people kiss on screen can be very weird sometimes. The slightest detail can take you out of it. However, it becomes so much easier to forget all about those issues when the film or series has the weight of history and narrative to propel one person forward, literally towards another.

You don’t have to shoot it on the slope of a hill. But apparently, it helps.

Red, White & Royal Blue is streaming now on Prime Video.

The Delicate Art of the Grab-and-Kiss
Liz Shannon Miller

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