Nothing is perfect, not even the human side of Catholicism. Understand that this statement is coming from someone who considers himself to be a devout Catholic and who hopes to continue to deepen his faith for as long as there is air in my lungs. In case it is not clear, I am talking about myself, who is also not perfect. There is a perception, a borderline stereotype really, that says when you apply such a label to yourself, you are automatically not allowed to mess up. At the very least, your sins receive extra scrutiny. Is not your cozy relationship with God supposed to keep you from doing anything wrong? Or so the conventional wisdom might go. That is hogwash, of course, and this extends to the notion that the Faith makes perfect people, or that perfect people lead it. The teachings themselves, with their Divine inspiration, are meant to lead us in the right direction, but so many of us fail. Today’s film has nothing to do with Catholicism, at least not directly, although one scene does have a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the wall. This Catholic’s eyes are always drawn to such touches. Instead, I am talking about Mile End Kicks (2025), a movie about a young woman who makes a lot of terrible decisions but is loved by God all the same. That is the important part.

The messiness of Mile End Kicks starts in Toronto in 2011, where twenty-four-year-old music critic Grace Pine (Barbie Ferreira) writes for the alternative weekly Merch under editor Jeff (Jay Baruchel). Grace has bigger ambitions and successfully pitches a book for the 33 1/3 series about Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill (1995), receiving an advance and deciding that Montreal is the perfect place to spend the summer writing it. She moves into a Mile End apartment with Madeleine (Juliette Gariépy), a French-Canadian disc jockey (DJ), and makes a list of goals that includes climbing Mount Royal, learning French, finishing her book, having what she considers “actual sex,” and falling in love. That last portion of the list will prove considerably more distracting than the writing, which is an oddly Catholic stance when you think about it. At a loft party, Grace discovers the local indie band Bone Patrol and meets guitarist Archie Webber (Devon Bostick), who immediately takes an interest in her. Grace, however, becomes fascinated with the band’s eccentric lead singer Chevy Olsen (Stanley Simons), even after Madeleine describes him as the worst guy in Montreal. Archie and Grace form an easy friendship, but when she bluntly proposes sleeping with him, he explains that he is celibate for personal (not Catholic, unfortunately) reasons. Grace instead turns her attention increasingly toward Chevy, while also using her experience as a critic to help Bone Patrol. After finding Chevy working at a shoe store called Kicks, she learns that the band has an extended play (EP) record coming and volunteers to become its publicist. This gives Grace plenty of excuses to remain around Chevy and considerably fewer excuses for neglecting the Alanis Morissette book she was actually paid to write. Her attraction is eventually reciprocated, although their encounters are awkward, inconsistent, and hardly the romance Grace imagined. Chevy writes a song inspired by one of their nights together, and Grace is flattered by the attention even as his behavior repeatedly demonstrates why Madeleine warned her. Meanwhile, Archie remains supportive and clearly interested in Grace, though he is nursing his own wounds from an earlier relationship. In the midst of these competing emotions, Grace’s professional and personal responsibilities steadily unravel. She spends the money from her book advance, falls behind on rent, ignores messages from her publisher Phoebe Reilly (Sabrina Jalees), and becomes so consumed with Bone Patrol and Chevy that she forgets Madeleine’s important DJ performance. At another loft event, Grace is scheduled to read from her unfinished book, but Chevy performs before her and she abandons the reading to follow him. Unknown to Grace, Archie has overheard Chevy crudely insulting her to the other band members. Grace and Chevy again attempt to have sex, but the encounter ends badly and makes increasingly obvious that whatever connection she imagines between them is largely one-sided. Returning home, Grace receives a voicemail from Phoebe terminating her book contract because she has stopped responding and failed to deliver her work. Madeleine, furious over Grace’s selfishness and the two months of unpaid rent, finally confronts her as well. Life is messy, certainly, but there is also something to be said for not making it messier by ignoring every responsibility at the same time. Archie then tells Grace that his celibacy followed an oral herpes diagnosis contracted through a previous relationship, admits that he has feelings for her, and reveals the degrading way Chevy spoke about her. Humiliated and overwhelmed, Grace decides to leave Montreal and return to Toronto. There she confronts Jeff, whose earlier relationship with Grace is revealed to have crossed professional and sexual boundaries while he was her editor. She also demands the money still owed to her for her work. Rather than allowing the summer’s failures to be the final word, Grace returns to Montreal for Bone Patrol’s EP launch. She repays Madeleine the rent she owes and apologizes, beginning to repair their friendship. When Chevy approaches her again, Grace finally rejects him instead of seeking his approval. She also takes the stage and reads a new piece drawn from her experiences as a young woman trying to establish herself as a music critic in a male-dominated world, finding a voice in the wreckage of the book she failed to finish. Before leaving Montreal, Grace spends one last day with Archie. He admits that he imagines not some grand rock-and-roll romance with her, but ordinary things such as grocery shopping together. Grace, who arrived in Montreal determined to manufacture a summer of artistic accomplishment, sex, and love according to a checklist, finally encounters affection that is considerably less glamorous and more sincere. She and Archie kiss in the Bone Patrol van and begin to become intimate, accepting the health risk he has disclosed rather than pretending it does not exist.

At the end of Mile End Kicks, it is implied that Grace still returns to Toronto, and the film does not magically repair her career, her mistakes, or every relationship she damaged. Instead, she leaves a little wiser, still imperfect but moving forward. For a Catholic, perhaps that is the more interesting ending anyway. Grace does not have to become perfect before she can be loved, by another person or, more importantly, by God. Besides, if there is any kind of perfection to be found, it is with God and not our fellows. To this end, there is an interesting side-by-side look into Grace and Morissette’s lives. They are victims of trying to conform to somebody else’s idea of what they should be rather than looking to God for such inspiration. I underscore this particularly when it comes to Morissette’s upbringing, since the film makes the point that she was the product of a strict Catholic background. From the little research I did on the subject, it seems that while she is now a practicing Buddhist, she has no animosity toward the Church. Indeed, she has spoken positively about aspects of her Catholic upbringing, including its ritual, and has described finding God in Jesus and in Catholic stories even amid what she regarded as the intensity of that upbringing. That is something I cannot speak to in terms of her music because the last thing anyone would accuse me of is being an expert on her albums. My reaction is based on how her childhood is described in the film, and it struck me as being tied to the kinds of stereotypes I mentioned in the introduction. Catholicism itself is not repressive, though individual Catholics and Catholic institutions can certainly fail to live up to what the Faith teaches, sometimes with painful consequences for others. There is freedom in the Faith, and the only true freedom we will ever know is found by surrendering to God. Admittedly, it is not the kind of carte blanche that says it is okay to behave as most of the people in this film do, but neither does it close the door to those who might do so anyway.

The last note to be made about Catholicism that I was inspired to make by Mile End Kicks is that it is also not okay for men to take advantage of women, sexually or otherwise. Anyone who associates the Faith with that kind of regressive behavior is not practicing it correctly, and Church teaching is pretty clear on this point. I would not watch this movie for such lessons, and there is a lot of material in it that I would usually avoid. Instead, look at it as a cautionary tale, while also remembering that the truest love you will ever know can only come from God.