Drama • 14A • 105 Minutes • 2025
I rushed across town to the only theatre playing Mile End Kicks and made it just in time for the first credit to show up on the black screen. I sat down and pulled out my notepad, finally ready. “What are you writing?” The first line from the film took me by surprise. Are you talking to me? No, they were talking to Grace (Barbie Ferreira) as she was taking notes in an equally dark club, watching a band play their set. I knew I was in good hands from that moment on.
Chandler Levack’s ultra-personal rom-com, Mile End Kicks, explores the indie music scene in Mile End, Montreal, through Grace, an unsure and ambitious twenty-two-year-old. Soon after arriving in Montreal from Toronto, Grace experiences the culture shock she was hoping for and begins following the fictional indie band, Bone Patrol and falls for the lead singer, Chevy Olsen (Stanley Simons) as she navigates the internal dynamics of love and relationships within the band, all the while attempting to write a book on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill.
This being Chandler Levack’s sophomore film after I Like Movies, a film that CFR has recommended in the past, we can begin to see some connective tissue for the stories Levack likes to tell. What she does better, bar none, than any other writer-director is her ability to write douche-bags. I’m not kidding, some of her characters are so reminiscent of people everyone has met before, whether they’re gaslighting, deflecting, or egotistical to a point where you can’t tell if it’s played for a joke or not. Her ability to hone in and pinpoint what mechanisms make these people tick is masterful. It’s part of her unique style of writing deep, immersive characters that aren’t surface level but real people you can imagine meeting on the street, or remind you of someone. This includes Grace, who is written as the relatable star of the film, but is incredibly flawed and selfish, and that’s the point. Who wasn’t that way in their early twenties, thinking they understood the world around them and treated it like a sandbox rather than weighing the consequences? It’s this level of care Levack writes into her characters that pushes her to the top of her craft. She can prop them up on a pedestal, then tear them down ten minutes later through their own doing, not external forces, which would have spared them the shame of their own choices and decisions.
Because Levack’s last two films have been period pieces, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the way she explores millennial nostalgia and memory. Levack has mentioned many times how personal a film Mile End Kicks is to her, exploring a semi-autobiographical debrief through Grace. What I felt experiencing the film was a similar feeling I had when I was in my early twenties; that I could accomplish anything, no matter what. With hindsight being what it is, I know now that many of the things you want to accomplish at that age are usually stifled by the fact that you just don’t have the life experience and maturity behind you to navigate many negative situations on your own. This is where many coming-of-age films become overly sentimental, where their teenage or early twenties characters accomplish everything against all odds. Levack understands repercussions and character, where she can keep the entire film grounded and realistic, even if it comes at the expense of her characters.
The biggest standout from Mile End Kicks has to be Barbie Ferreira’s performance as Grace, the nervous but eager music critic/publicist. She captures the essence of a twenty-two-year-old on their own for the first time, away from parental guidance and left to venture on her own. She hides her insecurities deep inside the character but gives enough to the audience to project subtext in every scene, keeping everyone oriented to her immediate feelings, even though the words might not be coming out of her mouth. Within ten minutes, I no longer saw Ferreira, only Grace, the rubber-stamped metric on a great performance. Along with her chemistry with lead singer, Chevy Olsen (Stanley Simons), bassist Archie Webber (Devon Bostick), the band also includes Isaiah Lehtinen as Jesse Matthews and Robert Naylor as Hugo Cōté. The entire band dynamic of Bone Patrol is entertaining, gripping, and toxic, everything you’d expect to see in an indie band from the 2000s. Simons’s portrayal of the lead singer is a hilarious, selfish, and, at times, frustrating character who abuses everyone around him. He’s egocentric and maybe even a bit closeted, that delicately touts the line between caricature and someone you have genuinely met before and can’t believe is a real person. Where Devon Bostick plays the straight man for most of the film, his character balances out the narcissism of Simons and the shyness of Ferreira through a warm and caring nature, someone you can’t help rooting for until he reveals his secret that you won’t see coming, and laugh nervously.
Something that may turn some people off to this film is just how unsexy it is for a coming-of-age rom-com. However, this is by design and in no way takes away from what the film is trying to accomplish; it’s a perk rather than a flaw. I have never seen so many uncomfortable sex scenes, so many moments of romance kneecapped by characters, and so many times I had to look away for the sheer awkwardness of the scene. I would suggest leaning into these scenes as you ask yourself why Levack would choose to portray her characters like this.
Presenting an honest portrayal of young adulthood isn’t easy and being in your early twenties is a mess, and you make mistakes over and over again, sometimes even the same ones; none the wiser to their consequences. Mile End Kicks is a film you don’t want to miss, even if some of the scenes make you uncomfortable. It’s rewarding, relatable, and unrelenting in its vision of growing up under the thumb of the indie music scene in the late 2000s.
Mile End Kicks is nominated for seven Canadian Screen Awards.
Where to Watch
Mile End Kicks was viewed at Cineplex Coquitlam.
Also worth checking: CBC Gem (often carries Canadian titles not listed elsewhere).
about the author
Merrick Gajdics is founder, publisher and editor of The Canadian Film Reviewer.