Up to this point, Crystal Moselle has been known for her acclaimed 2015 documentary, The Wolfpack. Her follow-up feature length project – which she co-wrote with Jen Silverman and Aslihan Unaldi – Skate Kitchen, blends aspects of documentary and fiction. It follows Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), a young woman who loves skate boarding, and one day she joins a group of girls that she follows on Instagram at a meet-up in a local park. It proceeds to explore how she, and her new friends, navigate the skate culture in New York.
The collective of girls are the “Skate Kitchen” that the title refers to, and they are an actual group with the Instagram page and everything. Members of the group portray the main characters in the film like Kurt (Nina Moran), Janay (Ardelia Lovelace), Eliza (Jules Lorenzo), and Quinn (Brenn Lorenzo), among others. The only named actor in the film would be Jaden Smith, who plays Devon, a guy from an all-male crew that Camille develops a crush on, which leads to some friction between her and the other girls.
It’s interesting that this came out roughly around the same time as Jonah Hill’s Mid90s, both of which involve skate culture, and outsiders joining a new circle of friends, as well as tapping into the white knuckled realism of Larry Clark’s films, specifically Kids. While I thought Mid90s works solid enough, Skate Kitchen manages to do a number of things quite better.
Moselle and her cinematographer, Shabier Kirchner, beautifully captures the joy of skate boarding as the camera swerves and follows our characters through the skate parks and the bustling city streets. You can practically feel the air hitting your face as they whiz by. The excellent soundtrack and the score by Aska Matsumiya bring a lively, melancholic energy to the images that really makes everything just burst with life.
The film is very much a hangout movie, and the key to a great hangout movie is lovable characters, which this film is full of. They’re instantly compelling, and distinct from another, and they all bring something different to the experience. It’s fun to watch them do their thing, sitting around waxing poetic, trash talking, or even simply being supportive of one another. It explores female friendship in an affecting way, and the dynamics explored between Camille and her friends, Devon, her overbearing mother played by Elizabeth Rodriguez, are played with a lot of nuance and details that feel deeply observed, like you’re right there with the characters. Occasionally, a plot beat will feel a bit too been-there-done-that, but it never bothered me because it always rang true.
Skate Kitchen is not just an impressive step into dramatic filmmaking from Crystal Moselle, it’s excellent work from beginning to end, and one you shouldn’t let fall through the cracks in the midst of all the bigger films trying to catch your attention as 2018 comes to a close. It tackles an interesting subculture, and focuses on a perspective within that subculture that has largely been ignored. It brings a rawness and intimacy that makes even the slight detours into conventional story beats feel truthful, and the largely non-professional cast effortlessly charms you the entire way through. The film has a deeply stirring and vigorous spirit to it that I found incredibly infectious, and it will make you wish you could spend more time with these characters.