Skate Kitchen: NZIFF Review

Skate Kitchen: NZIFF Review

The Wolfpack's director Crystal Moselle's latest is perhaps this year's Girlhood film.

A free-wheeling narrative, it's all about the youth. More specifically, though, the female youth.

A chance meeting between the director and the real-life skate kitchen crew led to this hybrid film, which in many ways feels like a reality show with more dramatic elements.

Centring on Camille (Rachel Vinberg), who's turning 18 and begins to rebel against her mother's desire to have her stop skating, Skate Kitchen finds its heroine discovering the crew online and joining their ranks.

But as she forms an attachment to both life downtown in New York City and a member of an opposing crew, Camille finds her newfound freedom is not what she'd expect.

What Skate Kitchen does, and does well, is capture the vibrancy, energy of both the skating scene, and of youth as well.

Whether it's free-wheeling dialogue about boys, periods or boarding or the clashes faced by the gang and Camille, these are not new stories in the coming-of-age genre. But what Moselle does is capture the urgency and the alomost-improvised feel of the group and their interactions, so much so that it feels almost documentary-like in its execution.

Everyone's playing an extension of themselves - from Camille's first crush and first brush with drugs to the rest of the crew's reactions to what hindsight will show are petty betrayals and squabbles, the film aches with the joys and hassles of being a teen, belonging and dealing with parental conflict.
Skate Kitchen is a reminder of youth, a snapshot of every story every felt by teens and everyone in their younger days.

Also, the scene with Skate Kitchen's girls skating and walking down the NYC streets to the laissez-faire sunny beats of Junior Senior's Don't Stop is this year's Girlhood Shine Bright Like a Diamond moment, a salutation to the carefree attitudes of being a teen and belonging.