Movie Review: Mile End Kicks

By John Corrado

In Mile End Kicks, the very enjoyable sophomore feature from former Toronto film critic Chandler Levack following her excellent directorial debut I Like Movies, we follow a young music critic trying to figure things out in her early twenties.

In many ways, Mike End Kicks plays like a companion piece to I Like Movies, with both films feeling in conversation with each other about our relationship to the arts. And, like with Levack’s debut, which was a piercingly honest tribute to teenaged cinephilia, aspects seem drawn from her own life.

This story is centred around Grace Pine (played by Barbie Ferreira), who is a 24-year-old music critic in Toronto writing for an alt paper called Merge Weekly. The year is 2011, and she decides to spend the summer in Montreal, taking in the Quebec music scene.

So Grace boards the Megabus from Union Station, and flips the CN Tower the bird from the bus window. The plan is to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s seminal album Jagged Little Pill, and use her publishing advance to get by over the summer. But she ends up falling in with the members of Bone Patrol, a grungy indie rock band instead.

Grace finds herself in a sort of triangle between the perma-stoned guitarist Archie (Devon Bostick) and lead singer Chevy (Stanley Simons), who fancies himself a wild, anarchic artist in a way that comes off more as immature narcissism. Chevy is described by Grace’s DJ roommate Madeleine (Juliette Gariépy), who is dating the band’s drummer Hugo (Robert Naylor), as the “worst guy in Montreal.” But the allure of chasing a rockstar runs deep.

Levack wears her influences on her sleeve, one of the most obvious ones being the Almost Famous poster we see on the wall of Grace’s childhood bedroom. Like that Cameron Crowe classic, Mile End Kicks is about a budding music journalist getting caught up in the wild life of a band, but it’s also primarily a coming-of-age story about a young person discovering themself against this backdrop.

As Grace, a sort of stand-in for Levack, Ferreira brings an honesty and authenticity to her portrayal of a young woman finding herself in a world of still-immature boys, while navigating late payments and blurred sexual boundaries. It’s a pretty wonderful performance that grounds the film. The supporting cast is rounded out by Levack’s I Like Movies breakout star Isaiah Lehtinen as Bone Patrol’s more sensitive, newly out of the closet bassist, and Jay Baruchel, in a rare role reversal playing a cad, as Grace’s hipster douchebag Merge Weekly boss.

If Mile End Kicks hits some of the expected narrative beats, the somewhat loose story structure fits the characters and setting well. More importantly, it serves as a love letter to Montreal in the early-2010s, affectionately presenting the city as a world of cheap rent and starving, restless artists making the most of a thriving indie music scene.

Levack’s anglophone gaze is mirrored through Grace’s own idealized view of the city, with Toronto taking on the aura of the place you go once you’ve made it and Montreal being where you can go to figure it out. It’s a compelling hook for a Canadian movie, one that will still have cross-border appeal, further cementing Levack as a fresh new filmmaking voice with plenty to say.