Kisses (Ireland)

Young neighbors run away from home to wander the streets of Dublin. This film mixes up some themes you don't normally find together, creating a coming of age/young romance film where the young kids are running from abusive environments and into a city that changes from magical to evil at times in the blink of an eye. When the boy gets into a particularly bad fight with his father they run away to the city with the hope of finding his older brother who'd fled the house two years prior. They start out with some financial resources but as those dwindle and the hour gets later without finding the brother the challenges begin to multiply.

The two kids are great together, the story kept me interested and the film makers played effectively with the visual presentation of the material. There's also some solid music mixed in as the younger boy Dylan is introduced by some of the people they meet to the music of the singer of the same name. Overall, I do recommend this one. Just be aware that though it is about pre-teen kids it is not a film for them. Unless you're OK with the swearing, frank sexual discussions (as the MPAA would probably say), dark themes of kids in peril and a run through a strip club thrown in for good measure.

As I'd written on subtitling on the past I thought this film deserved a special mention. Even though the characters all speak English they do so with an accent (though personally I didn't think it was too hard to follow). The first section of the film was subtitled. But at some point the subtitling was dropped, I'm assuming to drop the visual distraction once folks got used to the accents. It's a clever idea and one I'd wished for in the past on films like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, etc. Though I do always find it a little funny when the translation with drop a swear word - which in this case was particularly hard to miss as they were speaking English.

So in short it's the sweetest most charming moving about child abuse ever. Not 100% accurate desc, but still... I did quite like it all considered. Plays again Sunday at 6:30 if you're interested in catching it at SIFF.