Sorry it's a bit behind! Crazy week. I'm trying to catch up.
In the Loop
England, 2009, 109 minutes
Director: Armando Iannucci
Hilariously profane with its rapid-fire jokes, In the Loop (a standalone spinoff of the BBC series The Thick of It) leaves little room to breathe. Telling a fictional what-really-happened of how America and Britain started the Iraq war, it’s a witty satire concerning the catastrophe left behind when politicians are saving their own asses.
Shot in faux-doc style, it’s like the British version of The Office set in the US/UK government.
Kisses
Ireland/Sweden, 2008, 76 minutes
Director: Lance Daly
Adolescent coming-of-age stories are a dime a dozen in films, but often the magic is in the characters coming to life. Full of street grittiness and foul language from the kids themselves, watching this young couple spend a night wandering through Dublin is surprisingly affecting and ultimately uplifting, despite hiding behind a bleak working-class story of violence, sexuality, broken families and, yes, the discovery of Bob Dylan’s musical genius.
When the two kids finally deliver the film’s title, we see an 11 year old kissing a 10 year old, too young to even understand the act—but we also see love at its purest.
Details
Q&A with Kisses writer/director
Director and screenwriter Lance Daly was present for an almost hour-long Q&A with the audience after the screening, where he talked openly and candidly about the making of the film (at times having to stop and “censor” himself from revealing the cast and crew’s personal lives).
The subject of subtitles came into question right off the bat. The film we saw had subtitles only on the first reel of the film. Personally, I found this extremely distracting, and was glad when it disappeared about 15 minutes in, but others in the audience found it helpful as they couldn’t understand the dialogue through Irish accent. Daly said when they first screened the film at the Toronto and Portland International Film Festival, they didn’t have any subtitles and the audience reaction were “70-80% what they could’ve been.” Daly then polled the audience. It was 50-50 for the subtitles.
For the limited theatrical release in June, they are working on selective subtitling, which would not transcribe every line, only the important and hard-to-understand ones—this is something documentaries typically do with foreign interviews. The suggestion apparently first came from Mike Leigh, who saw the film at Toronto and had nice things to say.
Much of the stories come from the nightmare of working with the two kids and how the production had get around it. They even designated certain people as “child wranglers.” Kelly O’Neill, who played the girl, Kylie, was nearly replaced on the second shooting day, but after seeing dailies from the first day, Daly decided that any trouble she made on set was worth it just to get her fantastic performance. From the nightmare stories, I’m not sure I would have had the patience for them, but I’m glad Daly hunkered down and stuck with her, as she is indeed wonderful on screen. Daly told a cute story of how they had to drag Kelly out of screenings because she would recite her own lines outloud during the movie.
The film was partly funded by Swedish money, so they required an unhappy ending, Daly joked. One of the stipulations was that they had to do a week’s shoot in Sweden. The production found Sweden way too clean to play Dublin, so they had to ship in a truckload of garbage from Ireland.
As a lifelong Dubliner, Daly has a love-hate relationship with the city. His longest time away from the city was when he was living in San Francisco for four months (he had a nostalgic trip walking through the Tenderloin), so as much as he loves Dublin as his home, he also sees it as something that imprisoned him. This aspect certainly comes through in the film.
