The strange flipside of the kidult market is an unsatisfactory limbo where children frequently suffer for the viewing pleasure of their elders. You might as well send your offspring up a chimney or down a mine as pimp them out for the latest weighty allegory or high-minded concern Viewed Through The Eyes Of A Child. Even when these, if you will, grown-down entertainments are proper accomplishments and decent entertainments – Son of Rambow, Times And Winds – they struggle to find purchase with audiences who know only too well that they might just be walking into this year’s Millions.
We can only hope that this ingrained and often justified prejudice does not count against Lance Daly’s delightful third picture. Kisses, like its youthful cast, is a lively little firecracker of a film, bursting with heat and noise and potential danger. Set against parts of Dublin that one would not expect to find in any tourist guide not aimed at junkies and lowlifes, the film kicks off in the dilapidated suburban estate that pre-teens Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) and Dylan (Shane Curry) call home. Bullied by peers and siblings, Kylie takes solace in her aforementioned neighbour, a sullen young fellow whom she intends to marry when she grows up. Both kids are seen to contend with low level abuse that, early on, ignites into a major incident, prompting the pair to take off for the bright Christmas lights of the city centre.
As the film slowly warms from monochrome to technicolor, their expedition brings them through a deserted Smithfield ice rink, bustling shopping centres, lap dancing dives and dark alleyways. Along the way they meet Bob Dylan wannabes, kindly non-nationals and less appealing natives. This, however, is no freefalling travelogue, but a taut, suspenseful adventure emblazoned by chase sequences, mischief and terrible revelations.
It helps that Lance Daly, a director with a flair for gorgeous tableaux, finds picturesque details in the worst urban squalor. Despite menacing undertones, there’s a fondness for the main characters here that recalls Shane Meadows’ work with Thomas Turgoose (This Is England, Somers Town). The child actors respond in kind, with warm, witty and beautifully naturalistic performances.
This delicate balance between neo-realism and rough magic spills over into the narrative. Life in the Daly-verse may be tough but there’s room enough in the rut to allow for a sweet feel-good denouement.