I imagined it as a fun icebreaker. "Hey, Chandler, are you perhaps in the market for a new best friend?" was the vision. What came out to filmmaker Chandler Levack during a recent interview was more like, "Do you need a new friend? Because I loved your film, I felt so seen by it," almost immediately followed by my throat closing up and my eyes welling in a way that was undeniably obvious, even in a tiny Zoom window.
At least my inclination was right: the "Mile End Kicks" filmmaker got what I was saying. "I'm going to cry," Levack said in her first interview for the film. "That means the world to me. That really, really does."
It's only fitting that Levack's film would stir big emotions in both its maker and its audience. Much like her debut, "I Like Movies," "Mile End Kicks" is based on her own experiences. (Also like her first film, "Mile End Kicks" will celebrate its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival; it plays on opening night this week.) Set in 2011, the film follows budding music critic Grace (Barbie Ferreira) as she embarks on a summer in Montreal. She's hoping to meet and write about rising bands in the city's vibrant music scene, while also working on a bigger project very close to her heart.
Along the way, she deals with life, love (including a pair of paramours from the same band), professional disappointments, and the fallout of a horrible experience from her past. Part rom-com, part coming-of-age tale, the film is bright and funny and sexy and sad, the sort of thing that could only be made by someone who lived through so much of what her heroine encounters. As someone who started her own career in a field of criticism dominated by men around the same time as Levack, I felt seen by this film (a term I rarely deploy). Others will too, and some will just have a grand old time with it.
While the film is Levack's second, she wrote the script for "Mile End Kicks" before she made "I Like Movies." "I wrote this a decade ago when I was 27, and only maybe three or four years removed from the experiences that I'm talking about in the film," she said. "At that time, I felt like I just kind of had never written anything that actually felt like me. I had made a lot of music videos and I'd made a short film, but I was like, OK, I'm going to spend a month and I'm going to write this screenplay."
Levack didn't initially expect to direct the film, but around 2018, she got serious about her filmmaking -- and, specifically, about directing this one. "And it was just kind of impossible," she said. "I couldn't get actresses to read the script. At the time, it felt like I was going to have to try to make it for under a million dollars. For such a music movie, it wouldn't have really been possible. I would've had to shoot it in Ontario in Hamilton, pretending that it was Montreal."
Her producer Matt Miller suggested she make a film for Telefilm's Talent to Watch, a Canadian program designed for microbudget films. His advice? "Make something small that you could shoot for $200,000 and then when that movie's a big hit, reach out and then we'll make this for real."
Levack laughed remembering Miller's idea. "And I was like, 'Oh, my God, now I have to make a whole other movie. What are you talking about?,'" she said. "I was really mad. But that anger fueled me. I think it helped me sort of start again with a blank slate and really think about something that I wanted to make, to almost treat that film like a film school where I would learn how to work with actors and discover my sensibility."
After "I Like Movies," which is loosely based on Levack's own experiences working in a video rental store, premiered in 2022, Levack went back to her first script (fun aside: the film was originally titled "Anglophone," until Levack was told, "that no one in America would know what that meant and wouldn't want to watch it"). "I was struck by just how resonant it still felt to me," the filmmaker said. "And [now] I wasn't someone who's only three or four years divorced from the source material trying to shoot the movie, I was someone who's now spent a decade [away from it] and has a lot more perspective on it."
Levack is eager to talk about outside inspirations for the film -- she's even got a public Letterboxd list of them. "I love romantic comedies, they're my favorite kinds of movies," she said. "So it's movies like 'Broadcast News' and 'The Apartment' and 'When Harry Met Sally,' but it's also all of the Eric Rohmer summer movies, 'Summer's Tale' and 'La Collectionneuse' and 'Le Rayon vert.' Certainly [Richard] Linklater is a big influence, all the 'Before' trilogy and 'Dazed and Confused' and 'Everybody Wants Some!!' is a movie I love. Millennial pseudo mumblecore cinema, like 'Frances Ha.' 'Girls,' I rewatched the whole season again and had all these screen grabs that I shared."
Other picks: lots of Quebec cinema, like "Les Amours Imaginaires" by Xavier Dolan and "Tu dors Nicole" by Stéphane Lafleur, and then also Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous," "which is the touchstone of everything" for Levack.
But the film's specificity, rooted in Levack's own youthful experiences, is key to its charm. It's why it stands out. Still, how do you, well, do that? The way I asked it: "What is the line for you in terms of, I want this to feel personal and distinct, but I also need to protect my own heart when it comes to digging these things up?"
"In writing about your own trauma, you don't want to re-traumatize yourself, and you also don't want to have that color the experience as a filmmaker where it's affecting the way that you give direction to people," she said. "With 'I Like Movies,' I was like, 'Oh, I got this.' I can make a highly personal piece of art and it's not going to affect me and film Isaiah having a panic attack in the back room of Blockbuster -- which happened to me -- and I felt like I could handle it."
Levack's hard-won perspective inspired her to rework a few key elements of the original script. There were wider changes, like rounding out the film's Quebecois characters and setting. And there were more emotional pieces, like making Grace's relationship with Jay Baruchel's character "more of a gray area kind of relationship, instead of she's just a victim, which I think made the character more complex and interesting."
That doesn't mean it was always easy. While gender-swapping the lead in "I Like Movies" helped Levack navigate her own emotions, she knew the star of "Mile End Kicks" had to be a woman. That makes it feel more true, both to the audience and Levack herself.
"There is something with the gender reversal and Barbie's performance, where there were a couple moments where I felt like, 'Oh, my God, not only did I recreate this too much, but something is happening to my brain and I'm fully going back there and I am going to have a panic attack on set,'" she recalled. "As the director, you're in this position because you kind of can't really go down with the ship. So yeah, it is tough."
One moment in particular that really knocked Levack on her ass: the first time she shot a "guys in plaid shirts huddled up in the office" scene. "That was the one thing that fully made me lose grip on reality for a second," the filmmaker said. "I was like, 'Why are these guys in Sonic Youth t-shirts talking about Pere Ubu fully making me have a mental collapse?' It just made me realize, 'Oh, I haven't processed this. I thought I could process this by making this film.'"
As Grace, Ferreira delivers an incredible performance, an instant-classic rom-com heroine who is just as driven to figure out her professional dreams as her personal ones.
"She is extraordinary, and she really gave her whole heart and soul to the performance," Levack said. "She learned a Canadian accent with a voice coach! I can't imagine anyone else doing this part now. Not only is she an incredible romantic heroine, kind of in the tradition of Bridget Jones, she's so authentic and raw."
Levack was a big fan of Ferreira's work on "Euphoria," but it was another indie film that really sold her on her eventual star: "Bob Trevino Likes It." "In that opening scene, where she's hysterically weeping, sending the text message, I was like, 'Oh, there's Grace,'" Levack said. "I think also, she's not just an actor. She's sort of been this icon since she was 15 when she was modeling for American Apparel and doing a TV show for Vice. Even though she's a decade younger than me, she's intersected with this time in the culture and had lived experiences that felt like they aligned with the character, whereas a lot of other actresses that I'd been talking to, all they knew was being on set."
Grace's life is complicated by a variety of dudes, including bonafide Canadian sweetheart Jay Baruchel, who plays against type as Grace's former boss Jeff, a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing type whose presence in Grace's life and career shifts over the course of the film, with his scenes played out of sequence.
"There's something kind of fun about casting people against type, but there's also something about what they embody in the culture that gives it an extra layer," Levack said. "I think that's what he's doing, and he was excited about doing something that was outside of his comfort zone, and he brings a lot of depth of nuance to it that I think adds so much to that character and their relationship. As soon as he was on set wearing that Nick Cave T-shirt with his bootcut jeans, I was like, 'Oh, this is brilliant.'"
When Grace gets to Montreal, she's soon met by a pair of would-be suitors, both members of the same band (the hilariously named Bone Patrol) she comes to love. As the far-worse of them, there's "The Iron Claw" standout Stanley Simons, cast here as lead singer Chevy, essentially an amalgamation of a million bad boyfriends many audience members will recognize from their own twenties.
"I think there's at least three or four ex-boyfriends that I've had where there's direct quotes that these various guys have said," she said. "Even though he's obviously ridiculous, I do still have a fondness for him. I guess I know the ways that those guys can be kind of a black hole or a void in your life, and you can just sink so much energy into giving them way more autonomy than they deserve. It's almost like, the smarter the woman, the more Chevy the guy."
Simons is so good in the role, so oddly endearing (even when he's being completely maddening, and Devon Bostick's Archie is so much better suited for Grace), that it adds an extra dimension to the film. There's a sensitivity here, even for someone who could (generously) be called a fuckboy.
"In making this movie and collaborating with Stanley, who I think is such a genius in the role, I had to consider the movie from Chevy's perspective also," Levack said. "He is, in whatever way that he can, trying to be straightforward with her, in the most confusing way possible. You can hopefully read the movie from a couple different perspectives, but ultimately I love a rom-com love triangle." (Something else Simons brought to the film: his own musical chops. A song that Chevy plays for Grace, "Korean Supermarket," is actually a Simons original.)
Set in 2011, the film feels deeply of its time, especially when it comes to its technology -- Grace types away in her iPhone's Notes app that looks like a actual piece of notebook paper, she spends a memorable afternoon snapping photos in Photo Booth, a peek inside Jeff's Gmail inbox is like being hurdled back 15 years in time. Getting those props was a matter of homespun ingenuity.
Grace's computer came from cinematographer Jeremy Cox's partner, and was a 2011 laptop that she'd just happened to still have. "That became the Rosetta Stone of everything, I don't know how you replicate Photo Booth now. We literally just filmed the screen," the filmmaker said. "When I was trying to make the movie, a lot of people were like, 'Well, how are you going to film all the screens and emails and texts that you get? You're going to have to do graphics on screen. It's going to be so boring. It's not cinematic.' But there is something so cinematic about just seeing an old Gchat interface."
Grace's outfits similarly scratch a 2011 itch, rife with zip-up hoodies, little plaid skirts, and at least one pair of eye-popping TOMS espadrilles. Every part of it feels real. Most of it is.
"My costume designer Courtney Mitchell is a true genius, and she literally managed an American Apparel in 2011," Levack said. "I knew that there was no one else to do this. Some of the clothes that Grace wears are mine that I just kept and never threw out. So her Sonic Youth T-shirt and Spin T-shirt and her Strand Adrian Tomine tote bag and her little briefcase thing, that's my stuff. And then by-the-pound vintage giant piles of clothing, Etsy stores, and then just what people had in their closets that they didn't throw out."
Grace is, however, obsessed with one distinctly '90s-era piece of pop culture: Alanis Morissette's essential 1995 breakthrough album "Jagged Little Pill." Early in the film, Grace gets the chance to write a 33 1/3 book about the album (remember those?), which proves to be a seminal experience for her. So, how obsessed was Levack with the fellow Canadian when she was a kid?
She laughed. "'Jagged Little Pill,' I heard for the first time when I was eight years old," she said. "Someone at school told me about the album, and then I begged my mom to buy it for me in Future Shop, which is like Canadian Best Buy. We put it on in the minivan, and my brother, who at the time was probably four years old, was in the backseat. Of course, 'You Oughta Know' is the first song that comes on, and she's talking about going down on in a theater and "are you thinking of me when you fuck her?' And my mom was like, 'What is this? Why did you want this record?' I remember thinking I had to pretend to be scandalized by it, but as soon as we get home, it was like, I'm going to listen to this 70 times in a row."
Levack said that's pretty much what she did for the next year and a half. She wore out the tape and bought a new one. She memorized all the lyrics. "It was so powerful to me," she said. "When you find a cultural object like that, you're like, 'I don't know what this is, but I know that I'm becoming something new because of this.' That's why Grace chooses that record."
As Grace makes her way through a particularly punishing period in her coming-of-age, researching Morissette's own path is illuminating (and upsetting), for both the character and Levack's audience.
"The more I read about Alanis, her story really paralleled Grace's and some aspects of mine, this powerful male mentor that she had that kind of shaped her to a certain degree, and then the way that she emancipated herself and tapped into her own feelings of rage and anger and then turned all that pain into really lucrative art," Levack said. "When my editor and I were constructing the montage where she's writing about Alanis, we found that clip of her getting pat on the head by her mentor at the time, and Jay pats Barbie's head in the same way earlier on. She just kept talking to us through the film."
Like Grace, young Levack was a music critic in her twenties. Now that she's on the other side of making art, she clearly still has a strong affection for what criticism can do, what it can be.
"It's certainly mutated from my weekly days, where it felt like as a critic you could do a certain level of taste-making that would really tangibly shape an artist's career," she said. "I grew up worshipping Pauline Kael and Wesley Morris and Chuck Klosterman and Lester Bangs and Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and I really wanted to be a cultural critic in the mode of those writers. But by the time I was five years into my career, the entire institution of it was eroding."
That erosion hasn't really stopped either. As both a former critic and a current filmmaker, Levack feels that deeply.
"It's sad to see a lot of criticism or reception of movies be just a faint regurgitation of the press release or sort of feel like they're subtly written by AI. Or getting basic facts or character names wrong, or say that I'm a man," she said. "But I do think that criticism is a really important thing, movies need to be in dialogue with it. When you have someone accurately assess your work or understand what you're trying to say, whether or not you agree with them, it is really useful."
Reviews for Levack's first film were almost all positive; the film holds an enviable 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. At IndieWire, Katie Rife noted that the first-time film is "backed by strong writing and even stronger performances, the result is a film that is small but not slight, sweet but not cloying, and the kind of thing that can make even a cynical critic like movies again."
Levack didn't take those reviews lightly then, and she sure as hell isn't now. "Now, I feel super needy going into my second feature. I have no idea what I've made. I don't know if it's good," she said. "It's so weird to be in this position now where I'm like, 'Do you like it?' I didn't feel that way with my first one because I had no expectations, but now I feel like an indie band that got a 9.5 on Pitchfork for my first album. And I'm like, what's going to happen now?"
Next up for Levack: she shot her first studio movie this summer for Netflix. The stacked cast includes Chloe East, Sarah Sherman, Natasha Lyonne, Nick Kroll, and Sadie Sandler. For Levack, it was a wonderful experience, and a new one, as it marks the first time she's directed a film she didn't write. She's not going to make it too much of a habit, though.
"I kind of want to go back to the sort of pseudo-trilogy, I guess, and make something that will be a period piece again, but it'll be like a 2019 period," she said. "Probably by the time I make it, that will feel deeply nostalgic again, and that'll be maybe about my thirties or whatever. I hope to have the kind of career if, I can make two personal films a decade and then retire in my eighties, I'll feel pretty good. I hope to keep making stuff that feels true to me and has a level of authenticity to it, but I also realize that maybe mining your own life for stories is not always the healthiest thing to do."
It does, however, make for pretty good art.