KISSES
Written & Directed by Lance Daly
Produced by Macdara Kelleher and Mr. Daly
Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories
Ireland. 75 min. Not Rated
With Kelly O'Neill, Shane Curry, Stephen Rea, Paul Roe, Neili Conroy, David Bendito, José Jimanez, Willie Higgins & Elizabeth Suh
 

Bob Dylan doesn’t make it easy to make movies that involve him. There are too many different phases, too many cooler-than-thou scowls, too many ideas to pin the man down into any one picture. Just three years ago, Todd Haynes performed cinematic backflips trying to fit him into 135 minutes of I’m Not There, and anyone following suit should know they’re in for quite a challenge. And, if at all possible, they should stick to one album.

Throughout, Lance Daly’s Kisses interweaves songs from Dylan’s 1965 folk/electric opus Bringing it All Back Home, and he’s got a Dylan-esque yarn to go with it. A pair of pre-teen sweethearts named Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) and, naturally, Dylan (Shane Curry) run away from home fleeing abuse and neglect. They discover the adult world over the course of a night in Dublin searching for Dylan’s older brother, who fled the coop two years earlier. More importantly, they’re played by non-actors, so their prickliness is genuine and the accents are real—and so thick you’ll be grateful for the subtitles. The couple mostly bounces from one street character to the next—some friendly, others not—but they’re always stuck reacting to the craziness around them. When the time comes for self-revelation, it’s not clear how they got there.

The film’s peppered with musical interludes, but aside from a certain folkie wanderlust, it’s not clear why the characters always find themselves singing Dylan instead of, say, Donovan. It’s one of many connections that never quite get made. Another is the city itself. Drop the accents and this city might as well be London or any other world capital after 2 am. It’s a shame because modern Dublin is a pretty spectacular place, pitting Joyce’s cobblestones and ash pits against freshly installed coffee shops and banker-friendly condos.

But in the end, a quick-and-dirty low-budget film like this rests with its leads, and Daly chose the right actors. Kylie, in particular, shows a remarkable mix of precocious savvy and heartbreaking naiveté. The film puts the pair in a unique spot—having tasted many of the world’s hardships without the means to face up to them—and the kids come through perfectly, and knowing that they’re genuine Dubliners is part of the film’s point. Council estates are full of fragile, hopeful kids just like Dylan and Kylie. They don’t have quite enough to do here, but that can be forgiven. Russell Brandom
July 16, 2010