User Reviews

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." Bob Dylan

Short, bleak, and brilliant—Kisses is an Irish picaresque of two 11 year-old working class kids, Kylie and Dylan, escaping at Christmas time abusive relatives from each one's home. Their odyssey takes them the streets of inner-city Dublin, where Kylie is abducted by rapists and Dylan discovers his love for her as he fights the devils, who indeed are people, not the mythical "Sack Man" they've feared in their neighborhood horror lore.

The titular motif plays as an ironic reminder that life can give monstrous and beautiful at the same time: kisses that signify the unbridled lust of an uncle or a gift, the only thing one has, between two kids who have yet fully to understand the ambivalence. One "ting" is certain-- there is some beauty in the outer world: the immigrant dredge-boat driver, who gives them a ride to the city, is playful while he gets them happily to work for him as he introduces them to Dylan's namesake through a song (see above) that speaks of offering shelter from a storm.

Filmmaker Lance Shelby has done the difficult by extracting love from an unforgiving landscape, like Mike Leigh's kitchen sink blokes caught in the suburbs with no one to save them yet finding hope in small gestures, like kisses, that cost little but mean much. Shelby's transition from black and white boondocks to color inner-city is too much of a cliché to be praised, but the black and white is effective as metaphor for the colorless world of the poor burbs.

While the families are over the top also, or at least too unbelievably oppressive and crude, from the children's point of view, they are the devil until the kids meet the real one in the abductor/rapist. Lessons are to be learned even if the classroom is the school of hard knocks. After all, just north of them Irish have been killing Irish for decades.

"There's no devil. Just people." Kylie

Set in Ireland, Kisses chronicles two lower middle-class children, next-door neighbors Kylie and Dylan, who run away to the big city (Dublin) after they can no longer tolerate their abusive home situations. The inciting incident that propels Dylan to actually leave home (joined by Kylie) is when he hits his father in an attempt to stop him from beating up his mother during a drunken argument. Later we find out that Kylie has been sexually abused at the hands of her Uncle, so she too has no qualms about running away.

Writer/Director Lance Daly does a fantastic job in coaching the two first-time child actors, Kelly O'Neill and Shane Curry. Their language is very coarse and you'll have a hard time understanding what they're saying, without reading the English subtitles that appear on screen (yes, the actors are speaking English, but with a very heavy Irish accent). In fact, Daly brilliantly evokes an atmosphere of a violent middle-class world the children must exist in, utilizing dialogue which is peppered with all kinds of offbeat expletives and fascinating slang.

The time the children spend at home is shot in black and white, which is designed to signify the repressive atmosphere they live in. But once the children flee to Dublin, the scenes are now in color, connoting freedom from repression. Daly does well in providing us a snapshot of how bad some of these abusive family situations can be in Ireland today but by the same token, I wonder if he went too far in damning these abusive parental figures. What would have been better if he showed us that these parents were capable of moments of humanity, which would have fleshed their characters out a bit more. Some parental concern and guilt feelings were on display when we hear snatches of the parents being interviewed on radio, after the children are declared missing; but it would have been better, had Daly made the parents a tad bit more sympathetic, and hence multidimensional, from the get-go.

The 'second act' of the film is a mixed bag. Daly spends a little too much time with the children interacting with a kindly barge operator on a canal as he brings them into the city proper. Once in the city, however, there are all kinds of nice touches: the children avoid some kindly child welfare workers who they fear will simply return them to their parents; Dylan receives a kiss on the cheek from a prostitute that appears heartfelt; and they realistically fail to find Dylan's older brother, who ran away to the big city two years before.

Bob Dylan also figures prominently in this film. The barge operator first introduces the children to Dylan by singing a Dylan song and playing the harmonica. Later, a folk artist is singing a Dylan song at a mall where the children assist him in begging for money. Finally, the children run into a man at a stage door during a concert, who appears to be Dylan himself. It turns out that he's only a Dylan imitator, part of an Australian tribute band. We hear Dylan's 'Shelter from the Storm' as part of the film's soundtrack which is apropos, since the children are seeking 'shelter' in the big city, far from the 'storm' of their respective abusive domestic situations.

The second act crisis occurs when Kylie is kidnapped by pedophiles, who snatch her off the street and drive off in a car. I had a hard time believing that Dylan would be able to hold on to the back of the car as they bad guys sped off at top speed. The children's' eventual escape also seems far-fetched but when they finally fall asleep and wake up with the dead body next to them, that was something that could possibly happen.

The ending features the nice touch of seeing the parents relieved but then turning vindictive, as the children are returned to them. Dylan and Kylie exchange trusting glances as they are separated from one another and are brusquely brought back into their respective homes.

Not all of the Kisses' plot is completely plausible nor are the characters (other than the principals), fully realized. Nonetheless, the performances of these child actors are so sharp, that one will find oneself ignoring some of the film's aforementioned intrinsic shortcomings.

I enjoyed this film. I love watching films about the darker sides of human experience, about poverty, about children living through tough times, and films about overcoming, hope, survival & fighting.

This was not a sentimental film, which was great. It didn't have a tidy Hollywood ending, it had a realistic ending. The film carried a sense of being just a short glimpse into the lives of these two children, and in that sense the ending of the film didn't seem like a real ending. The film ended with a bit of hope for the future, mostly because the two children (neighbours) knew each others secrets and were going to look out for each other (and also because both children were clearly resourceful & were fighters). The two children were great together, and Dylan really sold the film to me with his quiet, gloomy, blank/hardened & almost hopeless expressions.

My main critique of the film is that crazy car-chase bit. That seemed very concocted and not realistic. I don't think that she would have just stood there while the creepy men were asking her questions from their car, she would have moved away from the car to be with Dylan. I also struggled to believe that 2 men would attempt to abduct an 11 year old girl wearing a fluffy pink jacket, who clearly did not look like a street kid - and that they would do so in front of a witness (Dylan) who could describe them, their car, and their numberplate. More realistic would be if someone tried to abduct her if she got separated from Dylan (however, even then, she really does not look like a street kid with no family to miss her).

Another critique of the film is that the children rarely look scared or anxious or cautious about trusting an adult. They are on the streets of Dublin by themselves late at night. At 11 years old I would have been terrified to be in their shoes in an unfamiliar (at least at night) place among strangers. Even after she is almost abducted Kylie does not look very scared. She lies down & goes to sleep instantly, and Dylan soon follows - obviously neither are afraid of the kidnappers returning or of other men attacking them (if they were, Dylan would have tried to stay awake). Kylie looked far more afraid after she found the dead man then she looked after she was abducted.

I didn't like black woman's reasons for kissing the old man. She said, "when you kiss, you either give or you take", but when he kissed her he took something from her, and when she kissed him sexually it wasn't because she wanted to, or because she liked him sexually. She felt felt like she owed him, she wanted to do something for him, so she gave him the only thing she could - sex/kisses - even though she was not attracted to him & even though he was her father's age. I'm disappointed that the director chose this morally questionable scene to be the moral highpoint and moral message of the film. I don't see how the film's message, "when you kiss, you either give or you take," is exemplified by this woman's semi-prostitution.

One more small criticism: the fight scene in Dylan's house didn't seem very realistic. I wanted Dylan's dad to be more threatening, intimidating, dominating than he was; I thought it would have looked scarier to the viewers if he had really got in her face, backed her into the wall or loomed over her (like the abusive husband did in the "Burning Bed" film). There should have been a film shot of Dylan's face looking worried/indecisive about how to act before he lunged at his father. Also, his father should have been still attacking the mother at the time Dylan attacked.

The acting & the directing is not amazing, but for the most part I was really captivated by Dylan's performance, by the children's friendship, and by the basic storyline. There are few films about children, particularly about children from tough environments/abuse/poverty, particularly about street children or children surviving on their own. There should be more films about children like this one.