Today, I saw the film The Skate Kitchen. It was interesting in that it harkened back to the pseudo-documentary, naturalistic style of Kids but with less menace. The plot was slow and meandering. The acting was amateurish but believable. The story was unique in that it followed a teenage girl, Camille, who finds herself and her community through skateboarding. On reading more about the movie, I learned that the members of Camille’s crew in the film are part of a real-life skating collective that lends the movie its title. So, like Kids, The Skate Kitchen makes use of non-actors to lend some credibility to the characters. But unlike Kids, The Skate Kitchen imbues most of the teens (and adults) with good intentions, even when they screw up and hurt others. While not an overtly feminist movie, there was a strong message of “girl power” in that the female characters were defined more by their love of skating and their friendships than by their relationships to the male skaters. I was also struck by the ways in which the teens took care of each other in the absence of many strong, secure, reliable parents.

If you’re looking for thrills and fast-paced action, The Skate Kitchen may not deliver, although the skate scenes are entertaining and there is a somewhat titillating group make-out scene. Our heroine, Camille, is relatively chaste, and the film is more about loyalty, being true to oneself, and reparation than it is about thrills. It is not the most captivating movie I have seen this year, but I enjoyed it. Its slow pace and message of female friendship and identity was a refreshing change from a lot of “teen movies.”