The Kids are Alright

“I didn’t even want to do the film,” mutters Shane Curry in a jaded aside.

“Shurrup you,” says Kelly O’Neill as she reaches for yet another jam flavoured Mini Roll.
The two young stars of Kisses, aged 14 and 13 respectively, are plainly in no mood to be interviewed. We’re out on a barge on Dublin’s Grand Canal and even in these confined quarters, Kelly finds enough space to run far, far away from dull adults like myself.
Don’t get me wrong. They’re lovely kids. They’re just a little, erm, spirited.
“They were like this all the way through the shoot,” sighs director Lance Daly later. “On the first or second day, I took jelly beans off Kelly so she pulled her coat over her head and refused to come out. She would only communicate by text message.”
The leading lady’s pre-teen tantrum was an extravagant one; it cost around €10,000 to keep the crew idly waiting that day. Between the sugar rushes and the youthful high-jinx, Kisses’ tight five-week schedule soon turned into a ten-week shoot.
Still, the filmmaker and casting director Nick McGinley must share the blame between them; they would insist on using lively non-professional child actors instead of the polite stage school variety.
“Basically we picked the kids that misbehaved the most in front of the camera,” says Mr. Daly. “After the jelly bean incident we had to think about getting someone else in. Then we saw the rushes and Kelly was so good we decided we couldn’t go with anyone else.”
The director’s instincts have proved sound. Kelly and Shane’s beautifully naturalistic performances provide Kisses with a pulse and an earthy counterpoint to the film’s mythological leanings. A dark, urban fairytale about two kids who run away from various domestic horrors for adventure and misadventure on the streets of the capital, this Hibernian Huckleberry Finn is easily pegged as a Lance Daly joint.
Mr. Daly, who dabbled with acting (The Commitments) and music (Go Blimps Go) before making his mark with his stylish no-budgeted debut Last Days Of Dublin, is one of the few Irish movie upstarts to display auteurial tendencies. His is a proper directorial imprint and capable, we think, of leapfrogging past Neil Jordan as this country’s pre-eminent visual stylist.
Kisses, takes up where his second feature, The Halo Effect, left off, skipping lightly between kitchen sink realism and lush Wizard Of Oz fantasy as it chases after its young charges.
“ I never saw it as a straightforward hyper-realistic picture from the Dardenne school,” Mr. Daly says. “I wanted it to be more playful than that. I like having music. I like having colour too much to go for something really grimy.”
It is true, nonetheless, that while many of his contemporaries fixated on the chrome surfaces and high rise properties of the Celtic Tiger, Mr. Daly was always more interested in the dirt under the fingernails. Last Days Of Dublin (2001) provides a snapshot of scruffy Bohemia and very Irish slackerdom; The Halo Effect (2004) concerns itself with the downtrodden proprietor (Stephen Rea) of a low-rent chip-shop. Kisses, similarly, tours the unseen, underprivileged nooks and crannies. It is a tribute to the director’s keen eye that he can find magic in the decimated housing estates, shooting galleries and back street squats where his precocious stars play.
“I never went for the Celtic Tiger thing because I didn’t live like that,” he says. “I was aware of it. I saw all those shiny apartment blocks around me. I just genuinely did not know anyone who lived in one of them. I couldn’t write about stuff I knew nothing about.”
Although the film’s depiction of lovely African prostitutes and generous East European canal dredgers seems to stand as a riposte to the current wave of anti-immigration fever, Mr. Daly claims that any social commentary is entirely coincidental.
“I had been trying to get a racing car movie off the ground (Suckin’ Diesel),” he says. “But in the end, Kisses like my other films has come down to what I could get made. Two kids run away. It was the smallest film I could think of so I knew I had a chance.”
The smallest film Lance Daly could think of has, even before its official release, become something of a sensation on the festival circuit, having scored awards and rapturous receptions at London, Galway and Toronto. It is, he admits, a nice feeling coming after some of the negative notices he received for The Halo Effect.
“On Kisses I learned how to not listen to everybody,” he says. “With my first picture I was on my own. But with The Halo Effect there were a lot of voices around and I kept trying to include everybody. Don’t get me wrong. I think some of The Halo Effect is great and some of the performances are great. But there are some weak elements and things that didn’t come together. By making everyone happy on set, I made a film that no one was happy with. Everyone is happy with Kisses because I made everyone miserable when we made it. You have to control the process. You have to be a bit of a prick.”
With Kisses already being touted in the US as This Year’s Once, Mr. Daly is not short of opportunities to once again wield his directorial jackboot.
“I have a stack of about 30 scripts from America,” he smiles. Trouble is they all have kids in them. That’s now the first thing they think about me. He directs kids.”
His gestures toward where Kelly was last seen throwing Twirls at Shane.
“No I don’t. Not any more. Never again.”