Club Kid has already won multiple awards at the Cannes, Chicago, Deauville and Stockholm film festivals and it’s not even out until January. Trying to get tickets for the screening at the London Film Festival was like securing golden circle tickets at the Etihad for Oasis Live ‘27. Fortunately, the BFI don’t use nostalgia as an excuse for dynamic ticket pricing, so some of us normals managed to get tickets to the main screening at the LFF.
We open with Peter (Jordan Firstman), a party organiser in the hugely hedonistic mid 2010s New York gay scene, getting an Uber to his club in Manhattan. The exceptionally glitzy first 15 minutes show him slamming back enough drugs to fell a herd of elephants and having various sexual encounters in the back rooms, including his first experience of sex with a woman (the British ‘Innit Girl’).
We then suddenly jump forward 10 years, with the heavy partying still not having dissipated, to find Peter living with the temporary and fantastically mad lodger/squatter Nicky (Eldar Isgandarov) in his rent-controlled Manhattan loft. His business partner Sophie, the sparsely used but excellent Cara Delevingne, is trying to expand their club business despite Peter’s rampant drug intake. Innit Girl’s best friend suddenly turns up at Peter’s door with 10-year-old boy Arlo (Reggie Absolom) whose mother has recently killed herself, asking Peter to look after him as his biological father. He initially refuses to take charge of the child, but when Arlo’s temporary carer flies back to London, Peter is stuck with attempting to juggle his partying life with the responsibilities of being a parent.
One of the hardest things to do in cinema is to create natural and realistic dialogue. Jim Jarmusch and Noah Baumbach are masters of this, but sometimes trade realism for entertainment. What Firstman does here is create that realism but with a sense of fun, enjoyment, and beauty. This is exactly why you buy into the characters from the very first minute and instantly care about them. And this is Club Kid’s genius – you invest in every single character from the moment they appear.
Firstman understands that even though your priorities change as your life evolves, you don’t necessarily forget the life you had before. He shows that life is not simple, that your previous lifestyle choices do not come without consequences.
Club Kid is one of the most wonderful films to come out this year, and Firstman excels at wearing multiple hats operating here as writer, director and lead actor. It is a film that digs deeply into humanity, and constantly questions the priorities of parenthood against selfishness and hedonism.
Club Kid – and Firstman in particular – will no doubt continue to win awards, and deservedly so. Let’s just hope it finds the audience it merits.
Club Kid is out in Cinemas in January with some early previews from November.
Review by Colin Lomas
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