Kisses review

“How to escape if you can’t escape?” That’s the quandary posed by writer/director Lance Daly’s enchanting indie.

Echoing early Shane Meadows, it follows 11-year-old slum-kids Dylan (Shane Curry) and Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) as they flee the domestic horrors of home for a wild night sleeping rough in Dublin.

Part cautionary tale, part fairytale, the film shifts almost imperceptibly from black and white into colour as they explore a city alive with possibility and peril, derelicts and Bob Dylan impersonators.

Arguing like an old married couple, the pair discover Dublin’s (extremely) dark underbelly, in the process falling a little bit in love in a way they don’t yet have the words for. It’s harrowing, heartbreaking stuff.

Curry and O’Neill are adorably unadorable, and though the film ultimately leaves them as we found them, buried alive in beautiful B&W on a dead-end estate, we know their worlds have changed forever.