Everyone Is Loving the 'First Kiss' Video, Even If It Is an Ad


If reference to just one viral video passes your lips this week, it’s bound to be this: “First Kiss,” by Tatia Pilieva, a 3-and-a-half-minute lineup of strangers making out for the first time, which has racked up more than 6 million views since being posted to YouTube on Monday. Oh, and by the way, it's a clothing ad — an interesting little fact that just emerged on Tuesday, thanks to a recent tweet from the Los Angeles–based brand behind it, Wren Studio, a chic women's label:

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But commercial or not, it's really fun to watch (even if it was sneaky to not label it as an ad).

“We asked 20 strangers to kiss for the first time …” is the explanation that flashes across the screen at the start. Then we see all the pairs — two women, two men and the rest men and women — one at a time, standing and facing each other in a blank studio while they giggle and fidget and make awkward banter, like, “Can you turn out the lights?” and “What was your name again?” It’s filmed in black and white and suffused with moodiness, thanks to background music by French singer Soko, who is also one of the smoochers. Practically everyone involved, actually, is an actor, model, musician, or designer, with notables including longtime “All My Children” star Jill Larson, Italian model Natalia Bonifacci, and indie musician Z Berg.

So what happens when lips finally lock? All good things, by the looks of it — with one exception, in which a woman looks like she’s cringing as her mate gets a bit aggressive. Otherwise, the make-out sessions get seriously hot and heavy, and downright beautiful. “That was a good one, I’m sorry,” declared actress Elisabetta Tedla, laughing and glowing after untangling herself from project partner Justin Kennedy.

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The video is just one of several intriguing creative projects that have used strangers as muses lately. In April, the Aperture Foundation will release New York photographer Richard Renaldi’s “Touching Strangers,” a collection of intense portraits of total strangers who were masked by Renaldi to physically interact for a photo. “Renaldi creates spontaneous and fleeting relationships between strangers for the camera, often pushing his subjects beyond their comfort levels,” the publisher notes. Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s “Stranger Visions” used discarded cigarette butts and chewing-gum globs to extract DNA and create 3-D masks based on computer-generated information, and “The Strangers Project” is an ongoing collection of more than 7,000 anonymous journal entries, posted on a blog and at occasional exhibits.

As for the work of amateur filmmaker Pilieva, her intimacy experiment seems to have hit a collective nerve. An endless stream of Twitter raves — the majority before news of this being a commercial hit — call it “a must watch,” “adorable,” “awkward and sweet,” “great project” and “cutest project ever.” On YouTube, comments included some ambivalence and homophobic hatred, but there was plenty of love there, too, including, “I leaned in ... then started to cry. This was beautiful.” Bloggers were generally gaga, too, with Gizmodo noting, really accurately, “It's unexpectedly touching, like watching a documentary turn into a romantic comedy that doesn't suck.”

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