Club Kid Finds Ecstasy-Fueled Grace

“You just got a kid, and he’s good to go despite a bit of trauma, obviously,” says Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s character Edison. This line in the first act announces Club Kid as the rare intersection of the specific with the universal. Writer-director Jordan Firstman’s feature debut threads the needle between a film lost in the therapy and club jargon of its day and universal themes of parenthood. The result is miraculous. Peter (Firstman)’s journey of having his son Arlo (Reggie Absolom) thrust into his life reflects the most recent, and one of the most emotionally resonant, explorations of the bond that can form between a single parent and a precocious child. Arlo is brought to Peter’s apartment (he doesn’t really have a doorstep) after his mother’s death by Edison, his mother’s friend, whom Peter had met “about a decade” earlier on the night that led to Arlo’s conception. The role of the cinema is not to show us exactly who we are or even who we should be.

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