Kisses

Director: Lance Daly
Screenwriters: Lance Daly
Starring: Shane Curry, Kelly O'Neill, Paul Roe
Running time: 72 mins
Certificate: 15

Lance Daly's tale of two children escaping their oppressive domestic environments is a reasonably engaging movie, but one that pales in comparison to Shane Meadows's similarly themed (and short) Somers Town. Relying on impressive performances from the young leads and Daly's poignant direction, Kisses simply lacks narrative incident and would fare far better as a 50-minute television drama.

A brutal and effective beginning, shot in black and white, depicts youngsters Dylan (Shane Curry) and Kylie (Kelly O'Neill) in their grimy domestic environments, subjected to aggressive and negligent parental figures. The stark opening shot of a dead goldfish floating at the top of a tank, with Dylan tapping on the glass to awaken the deceased pet, impressively establishes the bleak tone and a sense of futile despair. Before long, Dylan is being chased by his violent father after stepping in to save his mother from a bashing.

He hooks up with his similarly mistreated neighbour Kylie to flee to inner city Dublin in a bid to find shelter with his long lost brother. Along the way, they encounter whimsical Bob Dylan impersonators and sinister child abductors, and spend plenty of time playing around in various overlong montage sequences that seriously test one's patience. Despite being stylishly shot, the abundance of scenes like the kids messing around on an ice rink or generally running around the streets do little to heighten the mood and feel like padding - which is strange for a movie just 72 minutes long.

Nonetheless, Kisses strongly brings out a very resonant theme in today's society - the erosion of childhood innocence. Dylan and Kylie, played with superb grit by the young leads, are enveloped in a world of hurt, profanity, criminality and underage pregnancies and consequently bear the tortured, haunted demeanour of war veterans despite their infancy. Lance Daly's keen eye, bolstered with a suitably abrasive soundtrack, often frames the children's faces in close up with very emotive results.

The movie's major stylistic decision revolves around the limited use of colour throughout. It sounds quite mawkish on paper - switching from black and white to colour footage whenever the Dylan and Kylie start to have fun - yet it does work well with the material and brings a sense of childlike wonderment to proceedings.

Unsurprisingly, the greyness threatens to seep back into their lives towards the end, but the movie's resolution is both rewarding and ambiguous. It's just a shame the plot wasn't fleshed out more to enable a more complete cinematic experience, rather than a handful of inspired components.


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