'Destroy All Girls' Review: A Hip Skater Drama Straight Outta Jersey

First met in happier times rolling around the streets of a Jersey town just across the river from Manhattan, working-class Alex is especially close to her big brother Gabriel (Gil Perez-Abraham, who also collaborated with Mesa-Perez on the script, as did Flo Baumann and.

Alex, pointedly called Alexa by her mother (Florencia Lozano), who hates Alex’s tomboyish style, works in a bodega and looks after her brother a lot. Constantly bickering with her mother and burdened by her brother’s care at home, Alex finds joy mostly when she’s.

What Happened

One day down at the park she meets Cameron (Dominic Bruce), a lanky white guy with an odd accent (he’s Scottish but with all the glottal stops and gutterals sanded down) who is a real showboat on the jumps and ramps. Cameron.

• Identity here is very much in motion, much like the young athletes themselves.

• The way Vassilopoulos and her team have chosen not to define things like Alex’s gender identity feels very of the open-ended, label-resistant ways of the younger generations.

• The resolution when it comes is satisfying if slight.

Key Details

Together, they travel from skate park to skate park, getting high often on weed and beer, and hoping that they’ll get taken up by a sponsor so they can compete out in California professionally. It’s not exactly clear how they support themselves.

• Alex’s androgynous dress sense suggests that she might not be that into him, and possibly may be more taken with lithe skater punk Silvia (Silvia Kambouridis, luminous in just a few scenes).

• Will she go home or stay with sweet but self-absorbed Cameron?

• But the voice messages from her family that Alex occasionally listens to start to pull her back to her old life.

Why It Matters

Alex certainly doesn’t ask too many questions and is just happy to keep hanging out with them in New York and points beyond, living in the bus. She starts shooting the B-roll for Cole’s ongoing doc, and learns a few tricks from.

• Indeed, not much really happens apart from skating and partying, the latter reaching its high pitch when Alex and Cameron take mushrooms and check into a motel room for a night of hallucinations and.

• The road movie atmosphere may conjure features set in a similar milieu, like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey perhaps, or early Harmony Korine or Larry Clark movies, but with less tension or violence.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by The Hollywood Reporter as more details emerge