Kisses is a small Irish movie about a super poor boy and girl who live in the outskirts of Dublin. They both have terrible abusive families with drunk, uncaring parents. One day, the son gets in a fight with his father and the girl and he run away. They end up in downtown Dublin at night and have a wild time of it enjoying their freedom and spending the bit of cash the girl was able to steal from her brother's stash. Eventually, the darkness and depravity of the city catches up with them and they have to return to their miserable homes.
The film is shot is a very cute way, where it opens as black and white, and then as they escape, it moves into a washed-out color, then full color and then moves back to washed out and then black and white again as they return to their homes. This is a bit overdone, I think, but I appreciate that director Lance Daly is trying for something. It has the overall look of Medicine for Melancholy, but none of the elegance.
It is a very sad film about the desperation of these two kids' lives, but I think it's not immediately apparent how sad it is. I think we are generally moved to feel that anything about kids is sweet and nice, and the real pain they feel is hidden here, not only beneath the treatment of the color ratio, but also because the kids seem happy (because they don't know any better).
The kid actors are good, but I don't think that means much - I think kids are generally cheap cyphers in whom we put anything we want. If we like them and we want them to do well, we can say they're great actors; if we don't like them, we can say they're bad. It's a bit unfair, I think, to have them around.
This is an OK film, but nothing brilliant. I am not too wild about it, and I don't think I like how much of a downer it is. Warning: there is some unexpected sexual violence in this that sort of comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. This is pretty ugly, I think, and a bit manipulative, or even exploitive.
Stars: 2 of 4
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