Kiss of Life

A very sad plot plenty of difficulties and unexpected moments. A man was working for UN somewhere in Eastern Europe (Kosovo?) And he got a phone call from his wife, who desperately wanted him to come back. The family had two children, a young lady and a small child, plus their grandfather. Being the man of the house out, his wife became everything at home; she had to take care of the children and his father without any other help. Her husband decided to go for a while back home, to do that he had to go hitchhiking to the border to board a ship back to UK. In the meantime his wife was pushed by a car on the street and died. Children had to self take care. The film tries to be original because the mother is shown after her death trying to take care of everything at home. Many of scenes are part of dreams or nightmares of her children. Finally her husband got back home and she showed herself as if she was quitting. Certainly, the film is quite difficult to follow and you need to put all your brains to realize what's going on. This film is not for relax, you will always be in tension seeing it.

Part romance, part road movie and part ghost story, Kiss of Life is a strong but inconsistent debut feature from British director Emily Young. It's the story of a woman who – after being killed in a car accident – finds herself stuck in limbo whilst her husband, unaware of her death, races from war-torn Eastern Europe to be with her. In telling this tale, Young attempts to weave two very different stories together, and is not always successful. It becomes hard to care about one character or the other as you continually flit between stories. On one hand you have the family living in England. Helen floats in limbo whilst the rest of her family deals with the grief of her death. As Helen is reduced to being a spirit in her own home, she recalls previous times with husband John. Here, Young is attempting to wring emotional mileage out of Helen's situation, but it never completely works. This partly because it takes too long for her to work out her situation (You were hit by a car, your kids or father can't see you and are crying all the time. There's a good chance you may be a ghost) and partly because it all feels slightly too manipulative. However, as Helen, Dapkunaite does a fine job and is given able support by David Warner as her father.

John's story proves much more productive. Peter Mullan gives a wonderful performance as the father who will do anything to get back home. Hitching lifts with refugees or trying to find his way across deserted towns, his journey becomes not only a personal odyssey, but a document of the effect of war. It's in these sections where the dramatic irony of his wives death works so well. His desire to see her is countered by our knowledge of her death. Thus, his story is also tinged with an underlying sadness which culminates in an almost unbearably tragic scene in a deserted tower block as he continues his journey.

Kiss of Life contains many wonderful moments, but never quite coheres as a whole. Perhaps more suited to the small screen, it remains a confident debut from a director who will be worth keeping an eye on in the future.

As long as you are prepared to go at the film's pace this is a mesmerising, sad, uplifting and ultimately extremely rewarding film. It tells a story by painting a picture: absorb the imagery as well as the words if you really want to understand it.

Perhaps peoples reactions to it reflect as much their own experiences as those of the characters in the film. Go with it.

Not an easy going movie that one can understand without experience of life. Just watching the "literal" movie seems indeed long, and lacking of action. But when interpreting in a deeper sense, one can see the story of a midlife crisis in a couple, where one cracks under all the household burden, and the other gets lost in a no man's land, and how this impacts their view on life, and their relationship. Being lost in all the ruins of the Balkan was a great image for that, and the struggle to get back is figurative for the way one fights to get reconnected to the people one loves. In this sense, the movie was very complex, poetic and sensitive, and filled my head for days.

With this film Emily Young uses a simple plot to explore the deeper emotions of the human condition, including desolation, yearning, loss, love and grief. Ultimately the film questions the viewers' beliefs and philosophies of life, death and the afterlife. A mother of two is killed in a hit and run accident while her husband, unaware of the accident, but in the process of realizing his deep love for his wife and family, desperately tries to return from his aid mission in Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the dead mother's father, himself still in grieving for his dead wife is poor comfort for the disorientated children. To explore the mother's feelings she appears, following her death, as a spirit/ghost and interacts with the living. Some viewers may be confused by this and get bogged down trying to understand the order of events but really the death of the mother is serving to prime the viewer to empathize fully with the family characters in the scenes to follow. The order of events and indeed whether the events have actually occurred or not are largely irrelevant but the feelings evoked by the scenes are crucial. Some of the scenes and events/images are allegories for other events, states of mind, general emotions etc. Also the events have different meaning for each of the characters in the film. For example, the photo, shown regularly in the film has a very important meaning to the mother but a different but just as important meaning to the young son. The script is left quite bare and the director relies heavily on the skills of all the actors' expressions and abilities to convey the meanings of each scene. There are a number of tremendously emotional scenes in this film but the imagery in the wood and the final scenes with the mother in the rain are particularly important. I personally think this is an excellent film because it does demand full involvement and empathy from the viewer.