MILE END KICKS

Entract Films / Elevation Pictures

Directed & written by Chandler Levack

Starring Barbie Ferreira, Devon Bostick, Stanley Simons, Juliette Gariépy, Jay Baruchel

There is this specific kind of embarrassment that comes with being young and believing your taste in music makes you more interesting than everyone else. Mile End Kicks understands this intimately.

Perhaps that is why I found myself relating to it far more than I necessarily liked its characters. It reminded me heavily of my own life in 2009, when music felt less like something you listened to and more like an entire personality, a social currency, a way of deciding who was worth talking to at a party. I only wish I had been that much into Alanis Morissette as the main character. And, for the record, I never slept with my boss. 

The film follows a young woman(Grace, portrayed by Barbie Ferreira) trying to find her place in Toronto music scene while carrying the slightly dangerous belief that she is destined for something more interesting than everybody around her. It is a familiar premise, but Mile End Kicks is less interested in making its characters lovable than many of its musically influenced cousins.

This is not Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, where the city becomes a romantic scavenger hunt. It does not have the bruised warmth of Juliet, Naked, or the mythology of Almost Famous, where loving music deeply enough might somehow earn you entry into THAT secret room(backstage). Its closest relative might actually be Licorice Pizza: young people wandering around convinced they are already the protagonists of a much bigger story, making questionable decisions while adulthood waits somewhere offscreen, checking its watch. And that is both what works about Mile End Kicks and what may keep people at a distance. Add not being very accessible in Australia to the mix. Despite being presented at Brisbane International Film Festival last year. 

These characters are entitled. They are frequently unlikeable. They think they are a much bigger deal than they actually are(I already said that). But there is also something painfully accurate in that and cautiously funny. Most of us were probably unbearable at some point. We just did not have a camera following us around. That same tension was present in director Chandler Levack’s I Like Movies, a film I enjoyed. Levack has a particular interest in people who use culture as armour, characters whose encyclopaedic knowledge of music or cinema becomes a way of insisting that they are special. The problem, of course, is that eventually the world refuses to cooperate with the version of yourself you have invented.

Barbie Ferreira shines here because she allows that contradiction to exist. There is vulnerability underneath the entitlement, even when her character is actively sabotaging the people trying to support her. 

I especially loved the encouragement she receives from her new friends. They believe in her. They push her forward. They want her to succeed. And she still manages to shit all over it. But maybe that is the point.

“Coming of age” is rarely the neat little staircase movies pretend it is. Sometimes you get the opportunity and ruin it. Sometimes you mistake proximity to interesting people for becoming interesting yourself. Sometimes you are so busy imagining the story you will tell about your life that you forget to actually live it. Things do not work out simply because you want them badly enough. That is the learning curve.

My biggest disappointment was the wardrobe. For a film so embedded in music and identity, I wanted the clothes to do more storytelling. Music films are often sold through their visual mythology as much as their soundtrack. Almost Famous has Penny Lane’s coat. Daisy Jones & The Six built an entire fantasy people could dress themselves into. Even when those worlds are romanticised beyond recognition, they give you something tactile to hold onto. Mile End Kicks never quite creates that same visual hunger. And perhaps that is partly why it may struggle to connect with a wider audience. It has the music-scene ingredients, but not necessarily the intoxicating fantasy people often want from them. It is less interested in making you want to be there than in reminding you what being there actually felt like: awkward, self-important, exciting, humiliating and occasionally brilliant.

For me, that meant returning briefly to 2009. To the years when every song felt like a message specifically intended for you. When the right band could become a personality transplant. When you could spend an entire night around musicians and mistake it for destiny.

Mile End Kicks is not a love letter to being young and obsessed with music. It is the slightly Polaroid or one of those Memories things on Facebook… you see it years later, stare at for a little too long and remember the night. You remember the person you thought you were. And then you quietly think: “God, I was a bit of an arsehole.”

PS: Special mention goes out to Devon Bostick (Rodrick Heffley in Diary of a Wimpy Kid and every Gen Z girl’s boy crush who was ever into the series) he’s basically playing the same character here. Emotionally bruised, traumatised and with intimacy issues. Maybe a bit more grown up Rodrick. 

A little Mile End Kicks playlist: 

Alanis Morissette – “All I Really Want”

The Strokes – “Someday”

Metric – “Combat Baby”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”

Broken Social Scene – “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl”

The Libertines – “Can’t Stand Me Now”

Rilo Kiley – “Portions for Foxes”

LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends”

Alanis Morissette – “You Learn”