Movie review: ‘Kisses’ heartfelt tale of young Irish runaways

“Kisses” shows how much you can do with very little.

Only 75 minutes long and made in Ireland for what had to be a micro budget, this sweet, savvy and heartfelt film will affect you more and stay around longer than many more elephantine productions.

The story of a Christmas Eve that a pair of 11-year-old runaways spend in downtown Dublin, “Kisses” can sound familiar but it really isn’t. Written and directed with deftness, wit and restraint by Lance Daly, it makes magic happen on-screen when you least expect it.

Although the story starts on the afternoon before Christmas Eve, there is definitely no peace on Earth for the best pals who live next door to each other in a dreary housing tract on the outskirts of Dublin.

Because he has to put up with a rage machine of a father and an understandably resentful mother, Dylan (Shane Curry) has cultivated a fascination with electronic games as well as emotional distance as ways to retreat when things get too hot around him.

Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) doesn’t have a father on the premises, but she has five obstreperous siblings and a weary mother. Her best defense is a good offense – an ability to be practical, assertive and somehow optimistic.

Although these kids are teased, tormented and even tortured on a regular basis, a particular combination of bad events so terrifies them that they make a spur-of-the-moment decision to make a break for downtown Dublin, where Dylan’s older brother has been living for a couple of years.

Hitching a ride on a convenient dredger, the runaways hear for the first time about Bob Dylan, Dylan’s presumed namesake – “a musical god,” the dredger’s captain says – and the singer-songwriter’s music unexpectedly becomes one of the film’s recurring motifs.

Also on that brief boat journey, what up to that point has been a film shot in delicate black-and-white slowly begins to change until it becomes full color once Dylan and Kylie land in downtown Dublin.

Given that Dublin isn’t exactly Disneyland, “Kisses” makes a few brief visits to the dark end of the street, but these end up giving the film more texture and substance without ruining the magic.