Minding the Gap (2018)

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Tags

Abuse, Best friends, Bing Liu, Documentary, Illinois, Keire Johnson, Manhood, Review, Rockford, Skateboarding, Zack Mulligan

D: Bing Liu / 93m

With: Zack Mulligan, Keire Johnson, Bing Liu, Nina Bowgren, Kent Abernathy, Mengyue Bolen, Roberta Moore

in the city of Rockford, Illinois, three friends have grown up with a love of skateboarding that has kept them united in the face of personal tragedies, mutual family dysfunctions, and the trials of becoming adults along with all the expectations that come with that. Zack works as a roofer. He drinks a lot, spends as much time skateboarding as he can, and work aside, shows no sign of adopting any other responsibilities. That all changes when his girlfriend, Nina, becomes pregnant and they have a baby, Elliot. Keire is quieter, still living with his mother, Roberta, while trying to decide what he’s going to do with his life. He finds a job as a dish washer in a restaurant, but only seems truly happy when he’s skateboarding. Bing is a would-be movie maker, always filming his friends, and as time goes on, he begins to explore how they all feel about becoming “men”, while also examining what it means in today’s terms. Over the passage of time, Bing also learns that all three of them have been affected by events in their childhood, events that it appears none of them have fully, or even partly, dealt with…

If you’re thinking, “gee, skateboard movies seem to be all the rage these days”, what with this and Skate Kitchen and Mid90s (both 2018, and both worth watching) out there, then you’d only be half right, as the beauty of Bing Liu’s impressive documentary debut is that skateboarding is just the launching point for an extraordinarily perceptive, and moving, examination of issues such as domestic abuse, casual racism, and social and economic deprivation. Made over a period of twelve years, Liu captures those painful moments when he and his friends come face to face with the realisation that they have to step up and become the men they’re expected to be, but without any male guidance in each of their lives to help them. As the movie unfolds, Liu reveals that each of them have had to endure emotional and physical abuse as children, and all from their fathers or stepfathers. This has left each of them with issues that they are struggling to overcome, and Liu shows how well or how badly they cope with those issues, from the deterioration of Zack and Nina’s relationship and their eventual separation, to how the absence of Keire’s father from his life (he died when he was young) has left a void in Keire’s life, to how Bing’s mother, Mengyue, was (possibly) oblivious to the physical abuse that Bing suffered at the hands of her second husband.

Thanks to the closeness and the bonds shared by the three friends, Liu is able to get a number of candid admissions, and confessions, from Zack and Keire that might not have been possible if the movie had been made by an “outsider”. From these admissions and confessions, Liu is able to paint a subtly devastating portrait of compromised and misunderstood notions of manhood, as well as the social and familial backdrop that promotes these notions. As he delves deeper and deeper into this, he reveals how domestic abuse is something that one of his friends feels can be justified, while the other views the discipline he received when he was young in this offhand manner: “Well, they call it child abuse now, but…” (nothing further is said, there’s just a shrug). Violence is another recurring theme in the movie, and Liu expertly ties all these strands together to make a movie that is astonishing for its awareness of the depth of the problems it’s exploring, and the heartfelt sincerity with which the camera stays focused on the bad moments just as much as the good ones. For a first movie, this is powerful, enlightening, and disturbing at times, but always astonishing for the way in which Liu dissects such complex topics with precision and grace, and recognises that there aren’t any easy answers to the questions he raises.

Rating: 9/10 – there are a slew of tremendously good documentaries out there right now – Free Solo, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Three Identical Strangers (all 2018) to name but a few – but Minding the Gap is a seriously great documentary that stands in a league of its own; insightful and intimate on so many levels, and holding up a less than flattering mirror to the tattered social fabric of the American working class, Liu has crafted a moving and substantial movie that continues to resonate long after it’s over.

Skate Kitchen (2018)

06 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ardelia Lovelace, Crystal Moselle, Drama, Indie movie, Jaden Smith, New York City, Nina Moran, Rachelle Vinberg, Review, Skateboarding

D: Crystal Moselle / 106m

Cast: Rachelle Vinberg, Ardelia Lovelace, Nina Moran, Jaden Smith, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Kabrina Adams, Ajani Russell, Jules Lorenzo, Tashiana Washington, Hisham Tawfiq

Camille (Vinberg) is an eighteen year old Long Islander who spends much of her free time on her skateboard, or watching skateboarding videos on her phone. When she suffers a nasty accident falling off her board, her mother (Rodriguez) makes Camille promise not to continue with it. But it’s not long before Camille goes against her mother’s wishes. Discovering that an all-female skateboard collective called Skate Kitchen meets up regularly in New York City, Camille decides to go. She’s welcomed by the group, and soon she’s spending as much time as she can with them, while lying to her mother about her whereabouts. When Camille’s deception is discovered, it causes a falling out between her and her mother, and Camille ends up staying with Janay (Lovelace), one of the Skate Kitchen crew. She gets a job in a store, and becomes friends with a male skateboarder, Devon (Smith). When Janay suffers an ankle injury and is laid up at home, Camille starts to hang out more and more with Devon, but as their friendship grows, Camille learns that Janay has feelings for Devon as well…

Expanded from the short That One Day (2016), which also featured Vinberg and the Skate Kitchen crew, this feature length look at skateboarding culture and what it means for a group of young women is a mesmerising, accomplished movie that leaves the viewer in no doubt as to the sense of camaraderie and friendship that being part of Skate Kitchen provides. Camille is looking for somewhere to belong. Her parents are divorced, and though she lives with her mother, their relationship is often a rocky one. Skateboarding, with its semi-underground status and its own code of conduct allows Camille to feel that she’s a part of something bigger than herself, something that as she herself puts it, stops her from feeling “alone”. But Camille is also an eighteen year old whose life experience is far behind the likes of Janay and Nina (Moran), and though she feels right at home in their company – and female solidarity is an important aspect of being in the group – the potential for a romantic relationship with Devon eventually causes a rift that has the further potential to see Camille alone again. It’s that old coming-of-age dilemma: whether to stick with your friends, or move on – while being aware of the consequences.

This is Moselle’s first feature – she also made the intriguing documentary The Wolfpack (2015) – and the connection she’s made with the Skate Kitchen crew allows for a movie that has a fictional storyline but which also has an air of verisimilitude that grounds the action in a much greater reality than would otherwise be expected. There’s a freedom in skateboarding that Moselle captures through expressive, almost rhythmical camerawork, as the girls weave along sidewalks and in and out of traffic, their confidence and the ebullience they exhibit highlighting the sheer pleasure they must be experiencing. And it’s clear from the amount of bruises and scrapes the crew all display throughout the movie that no one’s faking any of it (well, except for Smith, who needed a skateboarding double). Away from the various skate parks and improvised bouts of boardslides and kickflips, the narrative is kept fairly simple, as Camille learns from her friends about love and sex, and she gets into deep water because of her uncertain attraction to Devon. Vinberg is a convincing ingenue, and though the Skate Kitchen members are basically playing themselves, there’s a freshness and a spontaneity about all of them that wouldn’t have been captured if they’d been played by actresses. And again, it’s this verisimilitude that makes the movie feel honest and sincere in its approach, and which helps it feel more like a slice of life than something carefully orchestrated or put together.

Rating: 8/10 – a wonderfully bright and affirming look at a sub-culture most of us will be unfamiliar with, Skate Kitchen is short on plot but big on friendship and young women looking out for each other (sadly, most of the male skateboarders are prideful dicks); it’s exactly the kind of movie that will make you want to go out and grab a skateboard and try your own tricks, which makes it not only life affirming, but inspirational too.