Why you can trust 12DOVE
Katrin Cartlidge's untimely death robbed Emily Young's debut feature of its first-choice leading lady. It also casts a shadow of pathos over her thoughtful meditation on love, loss and death.
Originally titled Helen Of Peckham, Kiss Of Life casts Lithuanian-born actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Burnt By The Sun) as a young mother-of-two. Killed one morning in a hit-and-run accident, she lingers in ghostly limbo, watching the kids until her aid-worker hubby (Peter Mullan) can make the arduous journey back from war-torn eastern Europe.
Poetic, heartfelt and structurally ambitious, Young's ghost story is also agonisingly slow and suffers from an inflated sense of its own importance - punctured slightly by the unwitting resemblance between Mullan's protracted commute and Steve Martin's similar tribulations in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Patient - very patient - audiences may find something to move and even inspire them. Everyone else will find it a bit of a trek.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
The Inside Out 2 panic attack scene is one of the best depictions of anxiety ever – and something Pixar director Kelsey Mann is incredibly proud of: "I couldn't be happier"
When making Kingdom Hearts, the "one thing" RPG icon Tetsuya Nomura "wasn't willing to budge on" was a non-Disney protagonist
The Witcher fans in shambles after a new book reveals just how old Geralt really is