“Skate Kitchen,” while having an internal pulse that keeps the viewer gripped, might feel too slow for casual moviegoers. At first, she is only glancing at these girls from afar, but slowly she makes her way into their group. They coast through the city feeling the wind and the freedom of belonging in a cohesive family, which is an aspect of life lonely Camille cherishes throughout the film. The film’s natural acting is informed by the real life friendships between the female skaters. Jaden Smith and Rachelle Vinberg star in “Skate Kitchen.” The camera acts like a fly on a wall, knowing exactly when to pull away and when to come close to capture the nuances of specific performances. The film does a great job with its cinematography, capturing the youthful breeziness of the characters as they traverse through the city. This narrative of self-discovery is compelling, as viewers follow a character who is literally discovering a new world and adapting to a new friend group – or maybe even first friend group. She watches them talk openly and frankly about love and life, not being able to relate but always feeling curious about these experiences she has not yet had.
It’s apparent how innocent and inexperienced she is when compared to the rest of the girls. She finds them online at first, eventually traveling to admire and then join them in the city. “Skate Kitchen” is framed through Camille’s point of view, so the audience sees the world of this Instagram generation of skaters through her eyes. This factor creates a rich portrait of the late teen desire to become a person owned by personal desire and not the desires of others. Their relationship, and Camille’s refusal to live through the conventional lens of what her mother wants for her, drives much of the conflict of the story. Viewers see Camille’s complicated relationship with her mother, played by Elizabeth Rodriguez, who forbids her daughter from skating at the beginning of the film after a serious injury. Much of the film is built around and inspired by Vinberg’s own young adulthood, which informed the story and the character. The director of “Skate Kitchen,” Crystal Moselle, met the female skaters in the film by chance, bumping into them on the Lower East Side. “Skate Kitchen” centers around her journey of escaping her daily routine and finding herself through an adolescent skate crew. Hiding her skateboard at night in her suburban Long Island home, during the day she sneaks onto the train to New York City with a community of female skaters. Unbeknownst to her mother, Camille is going through a transition of discovering herself during the vibrant summer when “Skate Kitchen” takes place. The smoke filters around her face and the wish she grants can be seen through her eyes. These dynamos don’t need a screenplay to hold anyone’s attention.On her 18th birthday, Camille, played by Rachelle Vinberg, blows out the candles on her cake with her mother standing behind her. That development had me tapping my foot waiting for Camille to come to her senses - and wishing Moselle had made this a documentary instead. The high is diminished when the narrative takes a turn - as fictional narratives will - as Camille is tempted away by a dude (a competent Jaden Smith) who’s already dated another member of the gang.
Moselle shoots downtown street scenes with passion and deep familiarity, setting the action to an infectious, raucous soundtrack (which made me feel about 100 years old for not knowing any of its tracks). She’s instantly welcomed into their ranks (they follow her, too, she learns) and a whole new world opens up - a world in which young women unapologetically take up space on Manhattan streets, clowning and pratfalling and snarking at lame bystander commentary. The first section of “Skate Kitchen” is a joyous, feminist call to arms (er, wheels): 18-year-old Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), frustrated with the sausage party that is her local Long Island skate park and her mother’s (Elizabeth Rodriguez) insistence that skating’s unladylike, sneaks into Manhattan to check out the Skate Kitchen, whose Instagram she follows religiously (in reality, Vinberg is one of the Skate Kitchen crew). Using the real-life skaters themselves, Moselle’s opted for a fictional narrative, with mixed results. Now, she’s found another fearless, feral LES crew to profile: the Skate Kitchen, an all-female skateboarding collective. Three years ago, director Crystal Moselle burst onto the indie scene with “The Wolfpack,” a wild (if, to a former colleague, rather implausible) documentary about a group of male siblings raised in near-isolation right in the middle of the Lower East Side.