It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Absolutely Fantastic

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Non-narrative films can be great, but this is something different. *Kisses* has enough plot and complications for anyone. Every thread is resolved, every theme revisited in this study of the beauty and terror of adolescents tasting freedom. This is one of those films in which painstakingly localized settings and characterization achieve the universal.I kept thinking of a line from Dennis Cooper while watching this: "And when they kiss, it's so cold and impressive to them." Yes, the kisses in this film are impressive to the characters, but there's nothing cold about them. They always seem to a seal a bond as warm as the sun. And though there's desperation and insecurity, the characters hold back and compensate as they would in real life. There are things we tell ourselves not to show until at last they show without our permission.Danger and wonder are everywhere, yet the tone deftly avoids the sentimental even when the structure employs techniques from classic melodrama.There are moments of joy in *Kisses* in which everything stops, like musical numbers without singing. And the use of color makes you wonder if it's the cinematography that's stunning or simply the world itself.

The acting of the kids was really good. They were portrayed realistic, which made out most of the charm. Yet, in the end, the movie got a little unrealistic turn into somewhat like an action movie, which was definitely unnecessary (except they ran out of ideas). It seemed to me, as if the director wanted to show that he can shoot also action-scenes. All in all the ideas were a little few, which were also not completely new. The supporting characters did not have much originality. Especially the ending was little bit too conventional and foreseeable. Portray of two kids was great, yet the story lacked of originality and ideas. Since the movie is just 78min long, it's worth watching.

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.

'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 DylanShort, 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