'Skate Kitchen' Is A Vibrant & Kinetic Feminist Middle Finger [Review]

Crystal Moselle‘s narrative debut is so alive that it pulses and breathes – and these aren’t the calm, even breaths that meditation app you’ve tried asks for in quiet tones. These are the gulps of gasping for air, trying to take it all in. The director’s follow-up to “The Wolfpack” has all the vitality of that documentary, but this time she sets the action in the New York skating community. Starring the offscreen group of the same name, “Skate Kitchen” is anarchic in the best of ways, giving a sense of authenticity to the story led by its band of badass girls in IDGAF mode.

This indie drama begins with teenaged Camille (Rachelle Vinberg) getting a brutal injury at her local Long Island skate park that will make anyone with a vagina cringe and curl up into a ball in her theater seat. Her mother (Elizabeth Rodriguez) makes her promise she’ll quit the sport, but Camille can’t stay away for long. Instead, she sees on the Skate Kitchen Instagram account that they’re doing a girls-only skateboarding meet-up in the city. Camille sneaks away to Manhattan, and the quiet young woman finally finds her people with the vibrant collective of women, whom she impresses with her tricks in the often male-dominated world. She admires the bold spirit of Kurt (Nina Moran) and is especially close to Janay (Ardelia Lovelace), but the group as a whole (which also includes Ajani Russell, Kabrina Adams, Jules Lorenzo) grows to be her real home. While she becomes an integral part of Skate Kitchen over the summer, she also begins spending more time with Devon (Jaden Smith), though her new friends warn her about him.

“Skate Kitchen” works best in its most kinetic moments, as well in the scenes that focus on the friendship between the young women. Since each of the actresses is a skater in real life, their skills are often jaw-dropping, with no apparent need for stunt women to stand in. Credited with “Skateboarder Cinematography,” Joey Dwyer keeps pace with them, giving viewers a sense of how talented each one is as they careen together around skate parks and through New York’s streets. Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner captures the city in the summer with sun filtering through many of the shots, but never losing the film’s grounding in reality.

Though the young women at the film’s core (Vinberg, Moran, Lovelace, Russell, Adams and Lorenzo) aren’t professional actresses, their scenes together feel real, while they lack the aimlessness that can plague improvised material. The script was written by MoselleJen Silverman and Aslihan Unaldi but their dialogue boasts an unpracticed air, though it rarely points to the ensemble’s acting inexperience. Their conversations – ranging from skating technique to visits to the gynecologist – are natural, indicative of the offscreen camaraderie they share. “Skate Kitchen” is weakest in some of the solo scenes between Vinberg and Smith. His acting style doesn’t always work with the actors around him who have little experience, and yet he somehow comes across as the less talented one.

As fearless as its characters, “Skate Kitchen” is a feminist fist middle finger raised toward a skateboarding world that often doesn’t leave room for girls and women to succeed or even to simply have fun. As in “The Wolfpack,” Moselle doesn’t just capture the rebellions of her characters, she expresses their triumphs and joys with intimacy and detail. [B+]

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