Mile End Kicks

Set in the summer of 2011 in Montreal's Mile End neighborhood, Mile End Kicks follows Grace Pine (Barbie Ferreira), a music critic in her early twenties who impulsively relocates from Ontario to Montreal. She arrives with two ambitious goals: write a book about Alanis Morissette's landmark album Jagged Little Pill, and lose her virginity 'for real.' Back home she endured an unfulfilling internship under a dismissive editor named Jeff (Jay Baruchel) at a publication dominated by gatekeeping male journalists who undervalued her musical taste; she ends that relationship as part of her fresh start. Grace finds a room via Craigslist and moves in with a sexy French-Canadian couple — Madeleine (Juliette Gariépy), a DJ, and Hugo (Robert Naylor), a drummer. On her first night, she attends a performance by Hugo's indie rock band, Bone Patrol, and is immediately drawn into the city's vibrant underground music scene. She becomes attracted to two bandmates: Archie (Devon Bostick), the guitarist — a polite, bookish pothead who is effectively celibate due to oral herpes — and Chevy (Stanley Simons), the charismatic lead singer, whom locals describe as 'the worst guy in Montreal.' Rather than maintaining the professional distance required of a journalist, Grace makes the ethically compromised decision to become Bone Patrol's publicist, embedding herself in the band's inner circle and deepening her romantic entanglements with both Archie and Chevy simultaneously. The film traces her navigation of an emerging love triangle while also confronting her broader confusion about identity — whether she belongs as an observer and critic of the creative scene or as an active participant within it. Grace struggles with feelings of not deserving love and repeatedly makes impulsive, self-sabotaging choices, including never paying rent to her roommates. The narrative follows her coming-of-age arc through the lens of musical passion, professional ethics, and romantic chaos in an early-2010s Montreal arts community. The specific resolution of the love triangle and the fate of her book project are not detailed in available pre-release and early-review sources.

Sources: Wikipedia, Flickering Myth review, Awards Radar review, The Link newspaper, Web search aggregation (Variety, Collider, IMDb)