Mile End Kicks (now on Netflix) is likely a labor of love for filmmaker Chandler Levack. The rom-com-ish movie is rooted in Levack’s real-life experience, casting Barbie Ferreira as a budding arts journalist in her early 20s, a situation that boils itself down like so: She finds herself/comes of age in the male-dominated world of music criticism by, well, getting stuck in a love triangle with two dudes in the same band. So the writer/director — who recently enjoyed the largest platform for her work yet by helming Netflix/Happy Madison comedy Roommates — mixes sexual politics and indie-rock nerdery via that’s-so-awkward comedio-dramatic situations, aiming for the sweet spot between thematic specificity and broad appeal. Now let’s see if it succeeds.
The Gist: “I think of myself as a brain in a jar.” Such is Grace Pine’s (Ferreira, of HBO’s Euphoria and the recent Faces of Death) self-assessment. It’s 2011, and we meet her as she takes notes at a concert by real-life indie-rock mainstays Islands. Someone asks her why she’s taking notes and she explains that she’s reviewing the show, a situation that’s a bit annoying but inevitable because she’s in a quasi-liminal zone where she’s smiling and enjoying the music but not losing herself in it because she has a job to do and I understand the mindset completely because I’ve been in that exact spot a zillion times. And from here I began noticing how the movie reflects the realities of life as a music critic without quite nailing it, e.g., how Grace has to submit invoices in order to get paid for her writing for music rag Merge Weekly, which tells us she’s a freelance contractor (or a “stringer,” to be more pejorative), but she also has a cubicle in the Merge office, something that’s pretty much never ever afforded to lowly stringers.
But I do understand the little thrill Grace gets when she opens the mail and gets a promotional CD of the new Joanna Newsom album, and relishes the idea of hearing it before the general public does. Sure, the emotion of the moment is exaggerated — and provides an opportunity for a juicy needle drop — but the heart of it is true. Grace works with a bunch of male guy-dudes who debate about how this album is actually better than that album, and she’s never included in this little circle of nerdy, watered-down testosterone (frankly, she’s better off that way). Her editor, Jeff (Jay Baruchel), is a dickhead, for reasons to be disclosed in bits and pieces throughout the film, reasons that underscore the overall idea that Grace is in the part of her life that’ll be defined by her attempts to find herself by way of a head/heart/loins adventure punctuated by bad decisions and even worse sex.
And that adventure consists of packing up (her vibrator is wrapped in a Spin magazine shirt) and leaving Toronto to visit Montreal — an indie rock hotbed at the time, thanks to bands like The Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, and the aforementioned Islands — for a summer to write a book about Alanis Morrisette’s hit album Jagged Little Pill, which she successfully pitches to an editor of the 33 ⅓ book series. That project derails in slow motion as Grace’s Montreal adventure progresses. She finds a temp roommate on Craigslist, Madeleine (Juliette Gariepy), a club DJ whose boyfriend plays drums in Bone Patrol. The up-and-coming local band boasts a nice-guy guitarist, Archie (Devin Bostick), and a lunatic singer, Chevy (Stanley Simons). The former appeals to Grace’s heart, the latter to her loins. Three guesses as to which one she pursues harder and the first two don’t count. It doesn’t help that Archie declares himself celibate (“personal reasons”), and it really doesn’t help that Chevy is described by Madeleine as “the worst guy in Montreal.” Chevy works in a shoe store called Mile End Kicks, and suddenly Grace finds herself more interested in buying shoes than meeting deadlines for her book or figuring out how to earn some money to pay for everything. But this is absolutely not the time in Grace’s life for pragmatism, you know?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Mile End Kicks taps into the similar semi-hopeless music-nerd energy of High Fidelity, and crosses it with Almost Famous, two movies that one must note are about men, not women. And add in some of The To-Do List to accommodate for its female-fronted rom-comisms.
Performance Worth Watching: Levack asks Ferreira to stand center-frame in moon-eyed reaction shots about six times too many — we get the point, she’s having New Experiences — but the actor manages to be broadly appealing at the same time playing against type, turning a character who could easily be a meek, naive stereotype into a complex woman who fearlessly navigates the dangerous area of overlap in the Venn diagram of professional and sexual mores.
Sex And Skin: Female toplessness in brutally awkward sex scenes.
Our Take: The core dramatic development in Mile End Kicks finds Grace making what’s ultimately a very horny decision: Pushing aside her journalistic integrity to cross over to the Dark Side and become Bone Patrol’s (shield your eyes!) publicist. I know – ewwwww. Sellout city. Or it should be the core dramatic development, if the film was interested in pushing itself outside the boundaries of a pre-fab setup in which the protag lusts for the bad boy while friendzoning the nice guy. And even that plotline is cluttered as Levack overstuffs the screenplay with potentially lucrative ideas that end up half-explored.
The movie seems too dead-set on being a loosey-goosey coming-of-age dramedy that an apologist might say stands on shifting stands dramatically in order to accurately reflect the protag’s situation and state of mind. The funniest component here is how Grace describes herself as “a brain in a jar” despite her actions, which define her, to be blunt, as being horny as hell. “Have actual sex” is on her summer-in-Montreal to-do list, and she readies an If I Ever Have Sex playlist on her iPod should the opportunity present itself. But Levack resists letting the film become a full-blown sex comedy or portrayal of the music-critic life. It’s a good instinct, considering the cliches of the former and the lack of broad appeal of the latter.
What the director lands on, however, is mildly disappointing coming-of-age fare that compromises Mile End Kicks’ potential. Grace flirts with being a typical quirky oddball protagonist frequently stepping on interpersonal landmines that explode with TNT levels of cringe. “Awkward” is the word of the day here, and while Levack stirs some chuckles, the end result isn’t quite funny enough, and it doesn’t quite engage the emotions as much as it seemingly wants to. The filmmaker’s stabs at authenticity smack of tryhardism, as if Levack may be too close to the material and might benefit from further fictionalization of the character.
Ferreira compensates for some of the film’s tonal washiness by being wholly relatable in all of Grace’s seemingly contradictory complexities — she never forgets that this is a woman in her 20s who feels a compulsion to bravely, gamely force change upon herself and let the chips fall where they may. There’s a moment where Grace sits alone in the office at night, realizing how she’s degraded herself. She breaks down crying, and the lights shut themselves off, prompting her to stand up, still blubbering, and wave at the motion sensor, as if it’s an SOS to whoever might witness her plight. It’s a smartly conceptualized and executed scene, one the movie could’ve used more of.
Our Call: Mile End Kicks is ultimately a likeable, if contrived variation on a familiar rom-com-dramedy theme. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
