Kissing Is the Easy Part

The Mathematics of Heartbreak

In the modern streaming ecosystem, the "young adult romance" is often treated less as a genre and more as an algorithm—a collection of tropes (the meet-cute, the misunderstanding, the rain-soaked reconciliation) assembled with the precision of a spreadsheet. Yet, in *Kissing Is the Easy Part*, director Fawzia Mirza attempts something subversive within these rigid confines. By adapting Christine Duann’s Wattpad sensation, Mirza doesn’t just iterate on the "opposites attract" formula; she interrogates the performance of adolescence itself.



The premise initially threatens to be standard-issue high school fare. Sean (Asher Angel), a physics prodigy with his eyes locked on MIT, enters a Faustian bargain with the wealthy parents of Flora (Paris Berelc), the school’s reigning "it girl." The deal? Tutor her, date her, and guide her toward academic respectability in exchange for a coveted recommendation letter. But Mirza, whose previous work *The Queen of My Dreams* displayed a keen eye for cultural displacement, shifts the lens here to internal displacement.

Visually, the film creates a stark dichotomy between Sean’s world—shot in cool, desaturated tones that mirror his rigid, analytical approach to life—and Flora’s chaotic, neon-drenched existence. When their worlds collide, the lighting shifts, softening into warmer, golden hues that suggest their mutual influence. It is a subtle directorial choice that elevates the material above the flat, televisual lighting often plaguing Tubi originals. Mirza understands that for teenagers, the emotional landscape is as vivid and terrifying as a horror film, and she shoots their intimacy with a sense of precarious beauty.



The heart of the film lies in the deconstruction of Flora. Paris Berelc imbues her with a tragic self-awareness that belies the "popular girl" archetype. Flora isn’t actually failing because she lacks intelligence; she performs failure because success carries a weight she isn't ready to bear. The scene where she effortlessly solves a complex physics problem in private, only to feign ignorance moments later, is heartbreaking. It speaks to a specifically modern anxiety: the fear that being "seen" is dangerous. Angel, conversely, plays Sean not as the noble nerd, but as a young man suffocated by his own ambition, willing to commodify human connection for a spot at MIT. Their chemistry works because it is built on a shared fraudulence; they are both lying to the world about who they are.



If the film stumbles, it is in its third act, where the mechanics of the romantic comedy demand a "grand gesture" that feels at odds with the quieter, more complex character work that preceded it. The inevitable reveal of the parents' bribery feels less like a narrative necessity and more like a genre obligation. However, the resolution manages to salvage this by focusing not just on the romantic reconciliation, but on the dismantling of the academic pressure cooker that trapped them both.

Ultimately, *Kissing Is the Easy Part* suggests that the titular act is indeed the simplest part of intimacy. The hard part is the calculus of vulnerability—the terrifying variable that cannot be solved for, only experienced. In a sea of disposable content, Mirza has crafted a film that asks us to look past the variables and see the human equation beneath.