Kisses

The music of Bob Dylan sets the no-direction-home tone for Kisses, a superior lyrical ragamuffin Irish drama about neighbor kids in a dingy outpost of Dublin who run away from their crummy home situations at Christmas and spend a 
 picaresque night on city streets. Writer-director Lance Daly got lucky finding such memorable non-pros via inner-city casting calls: Shane Curry projects boyish bottled-up anger, and Kelly O'Neill, with a sweetheart face made for close-ups, is breathtaking as his resourceful ally. But luck has nothing to do with the filmmaker's skill working with his young players to create scenes that convey jumbled feelings of fear, rebellion, complicated vulnerability, and simple kid joy.