Review: Mile End Kicks
"You had to be there" recollection of 2011 Montréal is a cozy exploration of navigating one's 20s
Being a critic is an insane job. It’s the expectation to write about other people while also channelling something true within oneself. Frankly, not everyone is that interesting to fill 200 articles a year with personal anecdotes. For 24-year-old Grace, played by Barbie Ferreira, she takes a hiatus in the summer of 2011 from her job at the fictional “Merge Weekly” in Toronto to rent a space in Montréal and write a 33 1⁄3 book on Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” before even pitching it. This excursion is in reaction to a lack of life experience that she feels is missing in her writing, something that her book editor later confirms as feedback. As if feedback itself isn’t the largest shot to the ego for a writer already.
Writing in inconvenient spaces and moments comes up a lot in Mile End Kicks. The film opens with Grace writing in her notebook amidst a wave of people enjoying a concert. Two women poke her from behind, asking what she is doing, to which she replies, “I am a music critic.” The reaction to this confession is a mix of believing it's cool and concern that she might do this for the rest of her life. Grace is later found at a party, hidden behind her phone, and Archie, played by Toronto screen legend Devon Bostick, asks if she has social anxiety, not knowing that wordsmith wizardry was going on behind the scenes. For Grace to win over her newfound friends in Montréal, the personal exploration can’t be found through writing anymore; she has to go out and live.
The notepad then takes on a different form. Instead of jotting down notes regarding a band, Grace sets a bucket list of experiences to achieve during her stay in Montréal. Both instances of journaling are in conversation with one another and are similarly limiting when capturing the scope of human experience. How Grace attributes a local band named Bone Patrol’s sound to Pavement, and the expectation to have sex that summer as a bucket list item, are both formulations of what others want to hear. Through Mile End Kick’s odyssey of mistakes and cringe-worthy asides comes the realization that life experience is not the journey to be like others, but instead to find one’s own specific voice.
Apart from the amusingly on-point depiction of mid-20s critics being mostly in distress about their life trajectories, the people and cultural context that surround the film bring an equally fun element. For one thing, Ferreira transforming into a fairly believable stand-in for director Chandler Levack shows the power of a meticulously styled haircut. As for the actress playing an impassioned pop culture nerd, she has been brushing shoulders with some niche material for some time, such as donning the Zoë Lund nun costume from Ms. 45 in the first season of Euphoria (an idea surely born from show creator Sam Levinson, who has since lost interest in the character) and starring in a Hollywood reimagining of the mondo horror film Faces of Death which is opening alongside Mile End Kicks. Other casting decisions, such as Bostick playing the guitarist of Bone Patrol, is too specific not to be a tribute to his portrayal of Rodrick in the immensely popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid films. Juliette Gariépy plays Madeleine, Grace’s roommate, who is instantly familiar from 2023’s French-Canadian hit Red Rooms, employing the exact same unsettling stare she uses in the crime-thriller while asking Grace for two months of unpaid rent.
The events of Mile End Kicks feel simultaneous with the real-world rural neighborhood its set and shot in. The exterior of the independent shoe shop that the film is named after is used, and documentary b-roll is dispersed between scenes. Similar to Levack’s feature directorial debut, I Like Movies, capturing these spaces that formed her youth is integral to the storytelling since this sophomore effort is based on her real experiences being a music critic in Montréal. Small choices and details like a critic being a cubicle job, Grace not pronouncing the ‘T’ in Toronto, and specifically chosen bands and songs in the soundtrack, make Mile End Kicks much more than a coming-of-age film, as it becomes a practice of recollection.
Coming-of-age films always need moments of mistake and regret, though. Most of these instances fall on the vocalist of Bone Patrol named Chevy, played by Stanley Simons, who catches Grace’s eye shortly after she arrives to town. In an amusing exchange with Madeleine, she likens the impulse of dating a musician to wanting to be them instead. In actuality, this back-and-forth of confronting the difference between wants and needs becomes Grace trying to find sexual awakening in a shallow poser. Chevy becomes the butt of most jokes in the film, sharing multiple sex scenes with Grace that are equally as cringe-inducing as the last. Gags such as Chevy sharing that he believes relationships to be a distraction from the music while cupping Grace’s breast begin to unearth the realization that there might not be much going on for these characters outside of their first-glance clichés.
Levack has been upfront in saying that Mile End Kicks is her version of a romantic-comedy, but it’s too wrapped up in authorial introspection to have the cheesy genre bits hit in comparison. She has worked with unlikeable protagonists before. Lawrence, in I Like Movies, is self-obsessed and hyper-focused about getting into NYU for film, and Grace is similarly willing to blow off her friends to finish her book draft. The difference is that working in this romantic-comedy mode gives Levack far too much leeway in Grace’s shortcomings, especially with a longer runtime, because the audience is trained to expect the character will surely have a change of heart by the end, when she confronts her problems head-on. I Like Movies had instances where characters would yell at each other and share revealing stories, while Grace continues to hang out with the same friends even after letting them down on numerous occasions. It’s surprising to see that for a film dedicated to capturing the intricacies of the period and experience, the hardships feel comparatively easy and overlooked.
Mile End Kicks opens in theatres April 17
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Loved reading your thoughts! Can't wait to see the film myself!