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Two kids, Dylan and Kylie, run away from home at Christmas and spend a night of magic and terror on the streets of inner-city Dublin.
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MOVIE INFO
On the fringes of Dublin two kids, Kylie and Dylan, live in a suburban housing estate devoid of life, colour and the prospect of escape. Kylie lives with five other siblings and her overworked mother. Next door, Dylan lives in the shadow of an alcoholic father and the memory of an elder brother who ran away from home two years earlier. After a violent altercation with his father, Dylan runs away from home and Kylie decides to run away with him. Together they make their way to the magical night time lights of inner city Dublin, to search for Dylan's brother in the hope of finding the possibility of a new life. Lance Daly's vision of Dublin, as seen through the innocent eyes of our protagonists, is a kaleidoscope of magic, wonder and mystery. But as the night wears on, and Dublin takes on a darker character, the two kids have to rely on the kindness of strangers, the advice of Bob Dylan and their trust in each other to survive the night.
The music of Bob Dylan winds through Lance Daly’s “Kisses” like the call of a twangy pied piper beckoning two preteen runaways deeper into the night as they wander through the streets of Dublin after dark at Christmastime. A small slice of Irish kitchen-sink realism embellished with fairy-tale fantasy, “Kisses” may strike you as either ingeniously magical or insufferably cute, depending on your taste. But more than the story, which circles back on itself, the natural performances of its young stars, Shane Curry and especially Kelly O’Neill, nonprofessional actors, lend the movie a core of integrity.
The asthmatic 11-year-old male half of the pair happens to be named Dylan. As played by Mr. Curry, who gives him a canny Dylanesque squint, he bears a striking resemblance to his scrawny, scruffy namesake as photographed on the covers of his early albums. Dylan and his fellow fugitive, willful, tomboyish Kylie (Ms. O’Neill), are next-door neighbors in the run-down houses known as kips on the outskirts of Dublin.
Their flight begins when Kylie pulls a ladder to Dylan’s window so that he can escape a beating from his father, a drunken brute who is first seen yelling bloody murder at a broken toaster. As Dylan scrambles to safety, the ladder collapses, breaking a window and a drainpipe and leaving him in deeper hot water.
The Bob Dylan connection begins when the runaways hitch a ride on the River Liffey with a dredger who plays the harmonica and tells them of a “musical god” named Dylan. It reaches a peak of deadpan whimsy when they encounter a Bob Dylan impersonator (Stephen Rea), sitting on the steps of a theater where an Australian troupe is presenting a tribute to “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
Once they leave home, the smudgy black-and-white cinematography gives way to tepid color as the youngsters slide through the streets on roller shoes bought with money Kylie has stolen from her parents. As they embark on a quest to find Dylan’s older brother, who fled home two years earlier and has hardly been heard from since, the color flushes and fades according to the mood.
“Kisses” regards the world through fearful, foolhardy preadolescent eyes. Kylie, who is bullied by her peers and molested by an uncle, believes in a nightmarish phantom called the Sackman who stalks children and animals and beats them to death in a sack. Sure enough, this boogeyman’s real-life incarnation appears in a car and tries to kidnap Kylie after she turns down his offer of a ride. Giving chase, Dylan plays the hero, and friendship blossoms into puppy love.
The title of the film refers to a chaste, mystical kiss on the cheek Dylan receives from a kind woman who may or may not be a prostitute and whose sweetness reverberates when Dylan and Kylie share their first serious kiss.
The adage that you can’t go home again doesn’t apply to Dylan and Kylie. Once their money runs out, lacking food and shelter after a night on the town, the runaways have nowhere else to go but back to hell.
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