Plus Icon
Owen Gleiberman
Chief Film Critic
@OwenGleiberman See All Add us as a Google Preferred Source
Add us as a Google Preferred Source 
Courtesy of A24 One of the things I love about movies is how layered they are. When a film connects on a deep level, saying what it’s truly “about” may not be as simple as it sounds. Chasing down a movie’s inner meaning can lead you into the mystery of things. A great movie can be “about” more than it seems.
Take “Club Kid.” Jordan Firstman’s ebullient and moving first feature tells a story that couldn’t be more straightforward — or, in a way, more traditional. Firstman, who gives a fantastic performance, plays Peter, a queer New York party promoter (a few decades ago we would have called him “downtown,” now he’s Brooklyn) who learns that he has a 9-year-old son, whom he fathered in a random three-way sexual encounter at one of his 4:00 a.m. club bacchanals. The kid, Arlo (Reggie Absolom), is sweet and curly-haired and British (he arrives with a chaperone from London); his mother, who raised him, recently committed suicide. The responsibility to take care of Arlo has suddenly dropped on Peter like a load of bricks. It’s something he doesn’t want and, for the time being, doesn’t have much choice about. But as he and the kid start to hang out, a tentative relationship forms, and the two begin to figure out what they might mean to each other.
Related Stories
