Kissing Candice

Flawed but has merit

Female sexuality, I think's a huge subject that we don't get to delve into that much and I was really interested in showing that on screen. It's something you always get to see, where the man is the instigator of all the sexual relationships and romances. And I wanted the female in this to be who's going after what she wanted and was being very direct and proactive about that. To me, that's what I have seen in many young women, they are very strong-willed and they have their own wants and I thought that would be an interesting angle for it; that we haven't seen much of it.

• Aoife McArdle; "'I wanted to make a film that was visceral and dangerous and had a woman at the centre'" (Aoife Barry); TheJournal.ie (June 24, 2018)

Kissing Candice is the debut feature from Northern Irish writer/director Aoife McArdle, whose career thus far has been primarily in music videos and commercials (she's probably best known for the controversial American Psycho-inspired video for Bryan Ferry's 2014 song, "Loop De Li", and the truncated short film for U2's 2015 song, "Every Breaking Wave"). When a music video director moves onto features, problems can arise, and Kissing Candice features many of them; the whole thing plays like a two-hour Lorde video, all deep primary colours (especially red) with no discernible diegetic source; self-congratulatory and often belaboured visual symbolism; oblique narrative justification for many of the scenes; an achronological structure with unannounced flashbacks (think Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907), except not nearly as well handled), and portentous staring into the middle-distance as the actors emote at one another instead of talking. The film is especially weak in terms of narrative - the entire plot takes up no more than a half hour at most, with the rest all mood and tone.

However, for all that, I rather liked it. The plot, such as it is, is actually built on an interesting enough hook. Set on an unnamed council estate in Dundalk some time after the cessation of the Troubles, Candice (Ann Skelly) is a contemplative, but rebellious youngster (the love child of Terrence Malick and Larry Clark, if you will). As the film begins, she is in the midst of an intense dream involving a young man she doesn't recognise. Several days later, she is stunned when she meets kind-hearted local gang member Jacob (Ryan Lincoln), who looks exactly like the man in her dreams. Jacob has been butting heads with increasing frequency with the gang's leader, Dermot (an excellent Conall Keating), who may or may not have been involved with the disappearance of a young boy from the estate, Caleb (Jason Cullen), who has also been featuring in Candice's recent dreams.

Anyone familiar with McArdle's work will instantly see the thematic uniformity - like many of her music videos, Kissing Candice depicts troubled youth, cut free from adult supervision and influence, going to extremes. And whilst McArdle proves fairly inept at handling the narrative, the film is aesthetically very well mounted, as we're literally placed within Candice's not-entirely-stable psyche from the off (the hallucinatory opening sequence is especially good in this respect). As the plot outline may suggest, there's a definite vibe of Ryan Gosling's critically reviled (but actually rather good) directorial debut Lost River (2014), and McArdle is obviously influenced by Nicholas Winding Refn and, to a lesser extent, David Lynch.

McArdle is clearly talented. However, it might help her career if she directs someone else's script next time, as her writing is what really lets her down here. Nevertheless, it's well acted, looks amazing, and, as debuts go, is not too bad at all.