Mile End Kicks

Wednesday March 11 @ 1:30 pm

Comedy / Drama / Romance / Music
Not rated – 1hr 51min

Hilarious, slyly self-deprecating and yet deeply compassionate, writer/director Chandler Levack’s delightful gem of a movie Mile End Kicks is one that already feels like it has all the makings of a coming-of-age classic for a new generation. It’s a work that’s profoundly attuned to character and refreshingly willing to poke fun at itself just as it finds an ultimate grace in the journey, making for a complete portrait with all its character’s rough edges intact. There’s an inherent beauty to how personally Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks begins. Grace Pine (a delightfully human Barbie Ferreira) is in a dingy basement as Canadian indie rock band “Islands” is on stage. The audience is packed shoulder-to-shoulder, only rivaled by how tightly crowded the band themselves appear on stage. But none of this matters to Grace. As she passionately scribbles her thoughts down onto a tiny notepad, it’s as if all her dreams are being formulated and completed simultaneously.

There’s much to be discovered in dark rooms such as these, where great art seems to frequently inhabit and grow wild. Losing yourself in art is a beautiful thing, and when that passion is discovered, giving it your all provides you with such a fulfilling relationship. And that is something both felt and innately understood in Levack’s semi-autobiographical film. She, too, was a young music critic in the early 2010s. And although much of Mile End Kicks is steeped in clear specificities mined from personal experience and nostalgic memories of a time long gone, there’s a universal appeal to how Levack writes Grace and how Ferreira portrays her. Levack shows how easy it is to lose oneself amidst a sea of possibility. It can be deeply exciting as we acknowledge the bevvy of roads in front of us, but there’s also paths that should clearly be avoided. But for Grace, who is 23 and finds herself in the cultural music hub of Mile End, Montreal, those warning signs aren’t necessarily at the forefront of her mind. And who can blame her?

On one hand, Ferreira perfectly exudes the confidence of somebody who feels the divine calling to create something beautiful and meaningful. But on the other hand, Ferreira also plays her exactly as Grace is: a nerve-wracked 23-year-old woman hoping to feel validated by somebody on the other end of an interview in an industry often dominated by older men. As she delivers her pitch, the glimpses caught of the push-and-pull of emotions in Grace make it so evident how lucky we are that Ferreira escaped the trenches of Euphoria. And so, Mile End Kicks finds itself off to the races. But only a short time later, the film finds its lead character grappling with stagnancy. It’s in this classic writer’s dilemma that Levack crafts the central conflict of her film. Extending beyond something only relatable to writers, Levack turns the attention of her central character to the most common distractions known to humans: developing a crush.

In the end, this is as much a love letter to “Jagged Little Pill” and Montreal as it is an ode to art that impacts us on a fundamental level. At the very foundation of every relationship between art and artist, there is a connection that is unique to the individual. It’s that truth which makes a film like this all the more special. That Levack can mine her own specific experiences in an insular industry and setting to create such a universal piece of art is wonderful.

It’s a joy to witness the 2011-isms: a new Joanna Newsom album landing on Grace’s desk, bands wearing American Apparel hoodies in front of projections on bedsheet backdrops, and the mere suggestion that four doofs with a bad band name might start generating buzz with Pavement-y sounding indie rock. It’s similarly delightful watch the sheer early-20s-ness of these characters, who blindly pursue their dreams with little sense of future consequence, armed with the confidence that they still have years left to get their shit together.

Levack asks the audience — both as herself in a speech before the screening and through Grace, talking to Madeleine on her balcony — why women want guys in bands, and whether what they really want is to be a guy in a band. Mile End Kicks is a film full of great terrible slam poetry, great terrible men, great terrible sex, and thank god Levack didn’t give in to budgetary pressure to shoot the film in Hamilton and pretend it was Montréal — Québec, I imagine, would not have forgiven this easily.