Skate Kitchen slices, dices dude culture

By Katherine Monk

We need movies like Skate Kitchen. Without them, we’d have no idea just how weird our all-pervasive dude culture truly is. For even the most banal exchanges between men can look spectacularly strange through the eyes of a woman.

So an un-gendered high-five to Crystal Moselle, who renders a granular image of New York City’s underground skate world through the character of Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), an 18-year-old from Long Island in search of community.

From the moment we see her skating around the local park, doing tricks and Instagraming her successes, we’re already presented with new working assumptions. Moselle shows the footwork first, hesitating on the female reveal, insisting on athletic credibility before we make the empathetic Ollie.

So an un-gendered high-five to Crystal Moselle, who renders a granular image of New York City’s underground skate world through the character of Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), an 18-year-old from Long Island in search of community.

Camille can skate. Her ability, her muscles and her wardrobe make her feel “boyish,” but her long hair, soft face and undeniable curves set her apart from the rest of the 14-year-old Bart Simpson clones in the park.

When she tries to land a rail ride and ends up with a plywood wedgie, she needs stitches, which prompts a hard-love session with her concerned mom (Elizabeth Rodriguez). She asks Camille to stop skating and, essentially grow up, but Camille needs to “Iive her truth.”

She runs away to the city, where she hopes to hang out with women skaters she’s seen on social media. Eliza (Jules Lorenzo), Janay (Ardelia Lovelace), Kurt (Nina Moran), Ruby (Kabrina Adams) and Quinn (Brenn Lorenzo) are part of a collective called Skate Kitchen, and once they see what Camille can do, they welcome her into their tight sisterhood on wheels.

Camille finally feels part of something. She has a place in the world, but when she starts hanging out with Devon (Jaden Smith), one of the dudes from the park who likes to take pictures, her bond with the Skate Kitchen crew is pulled apart.

The plot, which serves more as a wire hanger for the imagery, really isn’t the point of this movie. Feeling the wheel freedom of skating, and the ability to redefine the architectural reality around you with a purposefully warped plywood board, is what this movie is about.

The plot, which serves more as a wire hanger for the imagery, really isn’t the point of this movie. Feeling the wheel freedom of skating, and the ability to redefine the architectural reality around you with a purposefully warped plywood board, is what this movie is about.

The skater’s world can transcend sex. All athletic endeavour can reconfigure our understanding of the Other — whether it’s another gender, another race, or another physical normal. The power of sport is so enormous, it’s long been co-opted by brands and jingo, which is why the world of skate culture is so closed, so competitive, and yet so fraternal. Bro.

No one likes a sell-out. It’s probably why the women in the film, who are all real skaters, look a little unimpressed by the starfuck of the festival circuit, where the film has been touring since it premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Now in limited theatrical release, Skate Kitchen is in the awkward position of riding a thin rail between authenticity and commercialism.

Nonplussed: Crystal Moselle (centre) is flanked by the ensemble Skate Kitchen cast at the London Film Festival.

These women are playing roles, but this whole film — which started as a documentary idea — is  based in the reality of their own milieu, and the dynamic amongst each other. Much of the dialogue is improvised, the situations are fictional, but the emotions feel real enough, even when the performances seem a little unformed.

Skate Kitchen’s real success is simply offering us the opportunity to see a world most of us don’t know, and would never get a chance to really experience as a valid participant. The “valid” part matters. All subcultures demand a level of commitment and encoded behaviours — ability, idiom, ritual. This movie explores all those elements — much of which revolves around sexual exploits and the unconscious debasement of women — through a female lens.

Skate Kitchen’s real success is simply offering us the opportunity to see a world most of us don’t know, and would never get a chance to really experience as a valid participant.

It all looks odd, but Moselle is used to all that. As the director of the truly offbeat documentary The Wolfpack — the Sundance stunner about six brothers forbidden to leave their tiny NYC apartment — she’s seen the bizarre up-close, and personal.

She engenders trust, and you can feel her patience in every scene as the players say their lines, which are often well-written, while some are clearly improv. The overall mood is where this movie finds enough magic to overcome the cumbersome drama.

When we watch a young woman on a skateboard, with muscular thighs and an athletic build, find obvious joy in her ability to do something difficult, we’re forced to realize how ridiculously limited our concept of gender is.

It’s not about the physical package. It’s about the joy of being in a body. Any body. And putting that body on a board with four wheels, feeling your centre of gravity as you move through space, and believing in your ability to conquer obstacles.

It’s not about the physical package. It’s about the joy of being in a body. Any body. And putting that body on a board with four wheels, feeling your centre of gravity as you move through space, and believing in your ability to conquer obstacles.

Boys do it all the time, and we praise and sponsor it. Hence, dude culture — and all the trappings of a male-dominated domain. Skate Kitchen has all those ingredients, only with these women doing the cooking, there’s a slow roast of ego that wafts long after.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, August 23, 2018

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