Kiss Wagon review: The film has high ambitions and technical prowess but its for the lack of promise in its execution makes it challenging to sit through!

In this review, cinematic_beacon aka Rhea dwells on how the Kiss Wagon has a drug-inducing style, though there is not enough substance to support it! 

On October 22, 2024, I consumed my first ever legal drug. Confused? Well, that’s Kiss Wagon for you! Midhun Murali’s three-hour feature is nothing less than a psychedelic-induced acid trip. It’s as if Gaspar Noé and Wes Anderson decided to co-direct a film together, resulting in a whole new genre of cinema. Experimenting with multimedia, the film is a cinematic odyssey that narrates the story of Isla, a superhuman courier girl who must deliver a ‘kiss’ to the right recipient. Beneath her struggle to find the true beneficiary of the kiss, lies a mountain of other battles she must conquer before reaching the end. Authoritarianism, class divide, queerness, society, cinema—the list could go on and on.

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Murali’s choices in this film are poles apart from what a typical feature presents. I don’t think anyone in the world, let alone India, would have thought of a concept like this. The unhinged incorporation of techno and EDM, Shutterstock figurines, 60 underlying subplots, and maximalist narration- it really does sound like a concoction of a million different drugs, oscillating between uniqueness and absurdism. While I appreciate Murali's creative approach, the execution is far from perfect. Initially, the film is ‘cool.’ It’s fresh and idiosyncratic before becoming overly challenging to follow, boring, and pretentious. You see the vision but quickly lose sight of it. Why? Because Kiss Wagon has far too many auxiliary storylines that keep running for a good hundred and eighty minutes. How is one supposed to sit through that?

When I spoke to a few audience members, they expressed the same complaint. They didn’t ‘care’ to analyse what was going on after a certain point. The medium was distinctive, yes, but that’s all this film had—a profound skeleton of an idea, a seed. If the story had been kept simple while addressing half the themes, not only would the runtime have been shorter, but people would have actually stayed to watch the ending. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the impact of each dialogue in this film. Like the innovative editing, the sound design also keeps you from dozing off. Whether it was the delivery of a sentence or a verse of a track, Murali’s ingenious film is saved by the technical superiority of the team behind it. Every sequence had a wow factor attached to it.

Overall, Kiss Wagon is a film you should watch to understand why it’s okay to play things safe sometimes. I’m not criticising the movie for its ambition but for the lack of promise in its execution. If you want a temporary hallucinatory trip, definitely indulge in the first act. However, the aftereffect may send you down a spiral you don’t want to be thrown into.

Kiss Wagon had its Indian premiere at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival this year! 

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