Mile End Kicks is powered less by plot than by feeling — the kind that hits when a song comes on at exactly the wrong (or right) moment, or when a city briefly convinces you that reinvention is not only possible, but inevitable. Chandler Levack’s feature is a romantic comedy in the loosest sense of the term, more interested in creative malaise and emotional false starts than in sweeping gestures or tidy arcs. The result is a film that can feel shapeless and indulgent, but also disarmingly honest about the lives it depicts.

Set primarily in Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood, the film follows Grace, a Toronto-based music writer who relocates in the vague hope that a change of scenery will spark something — inspiration, ambition, maybe even love. Grace is not in crisis so much as stuck, and Mile End Kicks understands that stagnation is rarely dramatic. It’s a slow accumulation of half-finished thoughts, unread emails, and conversations that circle the same unresolved points.

Barbie Ferreira plays Grace with a blend of self-awareness and defensiveness that feels painfully recognizable. She’s funny, sharp, and often frustrating — prone to overanalyzing her own feelings while remaining blind to how she affects the people around her. Ferreira’s performance is the film’s anchor, grounding what could have been a collection of indie-rom-com clichés in something more personal and lived-in.

The romance, when it arrives, is deliberately unglamorous. There are no grand declarations or perfectly timed kisses. Instead, relationships in Mile End Kicks develop through shared playlists, late-night conversations, and mutual insecurity. The film treats intimacy as something negotiated rather than discovered, and while that approach sacrifices momentum, it gains emotional specificity in return.

Music, unsurprisingly, plays a central role — not just as soundtrack, but as identity. Grace’s relationship to music is complicated: it’s both her profession and her refuge, the thing that once gave her purpose and now feels burdened with expectation. Levack uses this tension effectively, allowing songs to function as emotional shorthand without overwhelming the narrative. The needle drops feel chosen by someone who understands how deeply music can embed itself in memory.

Where Mile End Kicks stumbles is in its structure. The film often drifts, mistaking meandering for meaning. Subplots appear and fade without resolution, and certain emotional beats are revisited so frequently they begin to feel redundant. There’s a sense that the movie is so committed to authenticity that it resists shaping its material into something more coherent. For some viewers, that looseness will feel refreshing. For others, it will feel like a lack of discipline.

Visually, the film leans into a casual, observational style that suits its subject matter. Montreal is presented not as a postcard city but as a lived-in space — messy apartments, cluttered cafés, streets that feel both inviting and indifferent. The city functions less as a backdrop and more as a mood, reinforcing the film’s preoccupation with temporary belonging and self-reinvention.

What ultimately makes Mile End Kicks work — despite its uneven pacing and indulgent tendencies — is its refusal to overstate its insights. The film doesn’t pretend that moving cities fixes anything, or that creative fulfillment arrives on schedule. Instead, it acknowledges that growth often looks like uncertainty, and that not every chapter ends with clarity.

In the tradition of indie rom-coms that value vibe over plot, Mile End Kicks will likely be divisive. Viewers craving narrative propulsion may find it frustrating, while those attuned to its wavelength will recognize something painfully familiar in its rhythms. It’s a film about trying to feel less lost without entirely knowing what “found” would look like.

Mile End Kicks doesn’t offer answers so much as companionship — a reminder that confusion, especially in your twenties and thirties, isn’t a failure so much as a shared condition.