A young writer decides to move to Montreal for the music scene and write a book about the impact of the album Jagged Little Pill.
Written and directed by Chandler Levack, Mile End Kicks takes a very specific time frame in a very specific place while injecting an outsider into the local crowd to follow her life. The writing here is decent; the characters are all flawed at best and horrific people at worst. As a Montreal club kid of the 1990s and early 2000s, the stomping groups were quite different (The Metropolis, The Spectrum, The Loft, Les Foufs, Mad Hatter, Thursdays, and a lot of dance clubs), something here feels off and benefit of the doubt means letting go of expectations and letting the film tell this viewer that this is how it was in the Mile End a mere 5 years post leaving town. The lead character should have connected more as well as a writer watching a writer, but she just did not connect. All that being said, the writing is decent with a few things being a bit annoying or annoyingly realistic for some folks but not all, and direction working quite well with the script at hand and tone of the film.
The cast here is interesting both in performances and choice of cast. The fact that their best known (internationally) Montreal actor is in the part of a Toronto website boss is an interesting choice. Jay Baruchel is the one most known as a Montreal kid to most audience and he does good work as a douchebag boss, a man who manages in questionable ways and is a iffy human at best. Baruchel does well here, giving a douchey performance that fits just right. In the lead, and you’ll see this an issue here, is an American actress Barbie Ferreira who does great, the note of her nationality is more about why not use a Canadian actress? Ferreira does well here, a solid performance in her second film in US theaters in two weeks (the other being the Faces of Death sequel/reimagining/homage). Her performance works here, she shows the many layers of her character, makes the most of her screentime, and her work feels natural here. Joining them are a series of international actors, so as this is a Montreal film, let’s give some props to Juliette Gariépy (of Red Rooms) as Madeleine, who gets not nearly enough screen time. She gives a true blue Montreal girl performance here, giving the kind of life to her character that Montrealers have all met many times, she’s fun but also has some responsibility, she’s has issues, she wants to be loved, all this while being a party girl, she’s a full character in just a few scenes. The guys who play the band members do decent here, but they come off generic which may be a choice in direction, showing that a lot of these guys are the same from band to band. Bringing one on as “the worst man in Montreal” is saying something as all Montrealers have met one of these guys. Their personalities do feel like they could be any dude in any music scene in any city. Overall, the characters all come off as flawed with few of them being truly likable which makes it more difficult to connect with the film. Yes, humans are flawed, humans are real, but something feels like it’s missing here.
The film is well-shot with cinematography that shows the locations and the mood of it all quite well. The work by Jeremy Cox is exactly what the film needed, showing the story clearly, no shaky cam, using the locations and their atmosphere at their best, giving the story life beyond the characters. He uses the location well and makes it feel like Montreal in 2011.
While Mile End Kicks is a well-done film on all aspects, something feels missing and it’s not quite connecting. This is a case of being from the city and having experience with a similar but not quite the same music scene and hoping to be able to connect more with the film and its story and ending up feeling like it’s not from the same version of the city as expected. This is not on the film, but a sign that it will hit just right for some and not at all for others. One thing all can agree on here though is the love for a good Montreal bagel.