Film Review: Kissing Candice

Omagh native Aoife McArdle is already a highly respected name in the film industry, known for music videos such as U2's 'Every Breaking Wave' and Bryan Ferry's 'Loop Di Li'. Specialising in evocative, moody visuals, raw authenticity and an interest in youth culture, she brings all this and more to her feature debut Kissing Candice, an unconventional coming-of-age border drama.

Ann Skelly plays 17-year-old Candice, a girl feeling trapped and unfulfilled in her rough town, where gangs of young men roam the streets looking for trouble. Candice's police officer father (John Lynch) is overbearingly protective, leading his daughter to escape into fantasy. These daydreams are heightened by her epilepsy, which induces moments of sensory overload and hallucination, which McArdle plays with beautifully.

Rows of streetlights become roads of light in the sky; dread-filled scenarios are cloaked in red; and organ music plays ominously during moments of transgression, alluding to the role religion plays in this border town. The humming score, meanwhile, feels like an electrical charge - or the blood pulsing in your veins.

These sensory aspects highlight Candice's burgeoning teenage sexuality, and her attraction to gang member Jacob (Ryan Lincoln) pulses with the all-consuming quality of first love. The only person of colour in his gang, Jacob and Candice are both outsiders, and while he resists her clumsy, performative attempts to seduce him, he is drawn to her too. But he knows this will only lead to trouble. And it does.

At once raw and stylised, dreamlike and terrifyingly real, Kissing Candice is a bleak portrait of Ireland, but a compelling one.

Directed by Aoife McArdle. Starring Ann Skelly, Ryan Lincoln, Conall Keating, Ryan McParland, Catriona Ennis, John Lynch. In cinemas June 22.

Rating: 4 / 5