General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Kisses

Kisses is a 2008 Irish-Swedish drama film written and directed by Lance Daly, in which two pre-teen neighbors, Kylie and Dylan, run away from their troubled Dublin homes on Christmas Eve and spend a day and night in the inner city searching for Dylan's older brother, who left home two years earlier.¹ The film stars two nonprofessional child actors, Kelly O'Neill and Shane Curry, alongside Stephen Rea in an uncredited cameo, and it was voted Best New Irish Feature at the Galway Film Fleadh before its Irish release on 21 November 2008.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Lance Daly, his third feature film¹^•³
Country and year	Ireland, Sweden; 2008¹
Release dates	Ireland 21 November 2008; United Kingdom 17 July 2009; United States 2010 (Oscilloscope Pictures)¹^•⁴
Leads	Kelly O'Neill as Kylie and Shane Curry as Dylan, both nonprofessional actors cast from more than 1,000 children auditioned³
Visual style	Shot in black and white, gradually shifting to color as the children reach downtown Dublin⁵
Music	Score by Go Blimps Go, Daly's former band, plus Bob Dylan songs on the soundtrack⁶^•³
Recognition	Best New Irish Feature at the Galway Film Fleadh; Metascore 68; 85% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer²^•⁴^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Kylie and Dylan live on an impoverished housing estate on the outskirts of Dublin. Kylie lives with five siblings and an emotionally vacant, workaholic mother; Dylan lives with a foul-mouthed alcoholic father, an abused mother, and the memory of an older brother who ran away two years earlier.⁶ When a row with his father erupts at Christmas, Dylan flees, with Kylie joining him, and the two set off for inner-city Dublin to find Dylan's brother.¹

By day the city is friendly and generous, and the children wander its streets, splurging on a pair of wheelie sneakers that let them glide through Dublin.¹^•⁶ As night falls the city changes character, and the children are plunged into a darker world in which the kindness of strangers wanes.¹^•⁶ By morning their dreams of a better life have dissolved and they set off for home, having gained a sworn friendship with a hint of nascent romance.¹

Production

Origins. Daly began writing the film in 2006. The idea came to him while driving around Dublin listening to Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home and recalling how he had contemplated running away from home as a child; his first conception involved two boys rather than a boy and a girl, and it came to life for him once it became a pre-teen romance and road movie.³^•⁸ The boy is named Dylan, and during the escape he and Kylie gain an understanding of Bob Dylan's significance; a selection of Dylan's post-electric classics appears on the soundtrack, and a couple of the songs are sung by characters.³

Casting. After visiting numerous Dublin schools and looking at more than one thousand children, the casting team shortlisted the worst-behaved among them, and Daly chose the nonprofessionals O'Neill and Curry. O'Neill stood out for her intelligence, independence, and strong personality; Curry distinguished himself by refusing to bring her tea and biscuits during auditions.³ O'Neill was 10 when shooting began and turned 11 during the shoot; Curry was 11 and turned 12.³

Schedule and financing. The film was shot from December 2006 through July 2007. Financiers worried that the script was too dark to be carried by two young non-actors, so the production used development money to shoot for one week first, capturing all the Christmas material, such as the chase down O'Connell Street under Christmas lights and the seasonal ice rink, that could not be recreated later in the year.³ The $2.3 million production was backed by the Irish Film Board, Sweden's Film i Väst, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, TV3, and Lars von Trier's Zentropa in Denmark.⁹

Release and reception

Kisses premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in autumn 2008 and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, among others.⁹ At the Galway Film Fleadh in July 2008 it was voted Best New Irish Feature, receiving cheers and sustained applause.² It opened in Ireland on 21 November 2008 and in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2009.¹ In April 2009, New York-based Oscilloscope Laboratories acquired North American rights to the Irish box office hit, and the film reached American theaters in 2010.⁹^•⁴

Critical reception was generally favorable. The film holds a Metascore of 68 based on 17 critic reviews and an 85% Tomatometer score from 53 reviews.⁴^•⁷ Reviewers singled out the two leads: the Irish Times called Kelly O'Neill and Shane Curry "two wonderfully natural newcomers,"² and Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum described the film as "a superior lyrical ragamuffin Irish drama."⁴ The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw praised the opening sequence, in which Dylan escapes his violent father through a bathroom window while Kylie holds a ladder against the wall, but judged the film "probably best regarded as an extended short."⁵ At the 6th Annual Irish Film & Television Awards, Kisses was nominated for Film, Director, and Script, with Kelly O'Neill nominated for Actress in a Lead Role.¹⁰

Style

The film's most discussed device is its color scheme. It opens in grim black and white on the housing estate, and the visuals gradually expand into color as the children move toward the city, reaching full multi-hues and neon signs downtown.⁶^•⁵ Daly has described the film as starting as a kitchen-sink verité type of film and then morphing into a movie where the kids go on an adventure, and he has said he wanted it to occupy its own space rather than invite easy comparisons to other films.⁸ The score is by Go Blimps Go, the soundscape band Daly had played in before turning to directing.⁶^•¹¹

Reported running times differ across sources: the Toronto festival catalog lists 72 minutes, Cineuropa lists 76 minutes, and Apple TV lists 1 hour 15 minutes.⁶^•¹^•¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Coming-of-age films › Coming-of-age films released 2000 to 2009

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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