For his feature directorial debut, Club Kid, Jordan Firstman studies the sacred texts of cinema – Dennis Dugan’s Big Daddy – and updates it through a perceptive and humanist lens highly reminiscent of the films of Sean Baker. It’s no surprise, then, that one of Baker’s closest collaborators, Alex Coco, produced a debut that has taken Cannes, TIFF, and now the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma by storm as one of the year’s buzziest titles. Could it be a fluke, or is Firstman the real deal? A debut with chatter this high can often feel overhyped by the time it reaches your eyes. Yet, something about Firstman’s filmmaking feels genuine and deeply emotive, and it’s no secret why Club Kid has resonated with audiences worldwide even before its release next month.
Firstman takes time to introduce his protagonist, Peter, whom he plays, in 2016, as he and his friends endlessly party in New York’s nightclubs without a care in the world. Adam Newport-Berra’s camera moves in a circular way inside the Uber as Peter and his friends sing and take copious amounts of drugs, immediately signaling something about the character that the film quickly clarifies when it cuts to “a decade or so later.” Peter is still the same person he was in 2016 – lazy, always high on a substance (he never really knows what he takes), and never fully cares about actively making a life for himself. He’s wasted a decade in parties, orgies, and drug abuse. He’s likely to waste the next one too if things don’t change quickly.
And they will, as one day Peter is met in his apartment by Edison (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), a friend of someone he met a decade ago and accidentally hooked up with during an orgy. That individual became pregnant and had a son named Arlo (Reggie Absolom), who is now in Peter’s care after the mother passed away. Of course, this all comes as a shock for him, an openly gay man who swears in his life that he has never had sex with a woman ever and barely remembers the encounter that happened a decade ago. He is now forced to take care of someone he’s never met and has no connection to, which, if you’ve seen Dugan’s Big Daddy, won’t surprise anyone, since it might allow Peter to clean up his act and become a better human being.
Firstman doesn’t reinvent the storytelling wheel and treads on territory we’ve seen a thousand times before. Many have compared Club Kid to a coming-of-age story, which does make sense given that Peter has never fully come of age, but the journey the protagonist goes through seems to be more of self-actualization than anything else. Even if Peter believes his days of partying (and party planning) bring him the most joy, one can see in his eyes how lost he’s been, and how his life is devoid of true purpose. Some of his friends have matured, but he’s always stayed right where he was a decade ago. It’s clear that, while he doesn’t want anything to do with Arlo at first, he will warm up to his son. The relationship Peter shares with him will allow him to grow meaningfully and become the person he’s always dreamed of being.
Firstman thrives in the connection between Peter and his son – their shared love of deep music cuts, their free-flowing, almost rebellious nature as Arlo becomes a nightclub sensation named “Night Shift”– that permits the audience to form a tangible bond between them. The performances feel so naturalistic that the approach Firstman takes through his lens always seems true to life. If the story felt familiar, it’s clear the first-time director would have to compensate elsewhere, and he develops a thoughtful visual language that responds to how his storytelling evolves. The opening scene is frenetic and strobe-heavy, then stabilizes as Arlo enters Peter’s life, and the protagonist begins to ask serious questions about where he’s headed.
The camera follows Peter constantly, even as his story starts to improve. It’s never about anyone else but him. We see what he’s feeling both internally and externally, and we even see Arlo through his eyes. There’s something about watching a kid grow that, no matter how old they get, they will always stay a child in your eyes, since you’ve seen them develop from their inception. Firstman is one of the few filmmakers of the modern era who captures this feeling through the way Newport-Berra’s camera conveys the innocence of a child who simply wants to grow up in a stable, nurturing environment, after years of neglect from a system that has sadly never considered his needs.
Peter is the first person Arlo meets who actively cares for him, even if it takes a while for the protagonist to warm up to the idea of becoming a parent. When that happens, Club Kid reaches a genuinely emotive back half, as Peter’s troubles come back to haunt him, which could upend the relationship he has now formed with his son. That connection he has with Arlo is at the heart of the picture, which Firstman never loses sight of, even as he introduces a revolving door of supporting characters, including Sophie (Cara Delevingne, in the best performance of her career) and Evelyn (Colleen Camp, an always reliably hilarious screen presence).
If there’s anything to take away from Firstman’s first feature, it’s that he knows what matters most. He always needs to be at the top of his game as Peter for his relationship with Arlo to not only solidify, but feel urgent. Firstman delivers a performance of great emotional depth and complexity, especially as his screenplay reaches emotive territory that might have moved an entire cinema to tears, but the film’s most impressive turn is Absolom’s Arlo. To portray so many pent-up feelings as you fail to understand why the world is so cruel to you is such a complicated feat, but it almost feels effortless in the way the actor captures both the innocence of childhood, still maintained amidst the uncertain environment he’s been in, and the desire for independence and security.
Firstman also expertly balances out sharp and biting comedy (one that isn’t afraid to push buttons, with jokes on, for example, Shia LaBeouf and Charlie Kirk) with a deeply felt, heartbreaking gut-punch that seems so obvious from the way he films himself as Peter’s sullen face, but still feels surprising when we eventually get to that moment. He might not be an expert screenwriter, but does it really matter when everything around it is so aesthetically and thematically invigorating? The festival audiences were right to celebrate and champion Club Kid, because it not only affirms Firstman as a genuine talent behind the camera, but also as a director with a long (and hopefully bright) career ahead of him.
The jury’s still out on whether or not this guy is the real deal – that will be judged by his second feature – but Club Kid is definitely no fluke. Firstman has been studying cinematic language for some time, and he’s developed techniques that fully serve the story he wants to tell. In that regard, he deserves the attention he’ll get come Awards season, and perhaps translate that adoration into golden statues. It’s what he – and this movie – ultimately deserves.
