‘Club Kid’ San Sebastian Review: Jordan Firstman’s Party Boy Turns Surprising Family Man In This Tender Directorial Debut

If you catch the first few minutes of Club Kid, the last thing you’d expect is that you’re about to watch a tender indie dramedy about a father-son relationship. But in his own way — and despite the initial appearances — that’s exactly what Jordan Firstman has to offer in his debut as a director, a film he also stars in. Premiering in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and anointed almost instantly — A24 bought it for distribution there for a reported $17 million — Club Kid ultimately has more to do with the second word of its title than the first. And while the two are connected both literally and spiritually, this New York drama turns out to be considerably more humanist, tender, and even conservative than its opening blast of sex, drugs, and chaos would suggest.

Firstman — a gay comedian who’s had an enormous post-pandemic rise — plays Peter, a fixture of New York nightlife, a party and event promoter for the LGBTQ+ scene, beloved and in-demand in that world, usually working alongside Sophie (actress/model Cara Delevingne). The opening scene establishes a typical night in their lives, the kind that starts in an Uber and ends who-knows-how, who-knows-when, with who-knows-who. The film then makes an odd ten-year jump that makes clear just how little Peter’s life has changed in a decade: older and more tired, he’s still riding out wild nights almost every day of the week, fueled by a reckless drug habit.

Just as it seems we’re in for a film about the complicated life of a party boy, Firstman pulls off an unexpected change of course. An Englishwoman named Edison (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) shows up at the door of his comfortable New York loft and drops off, almost like a package, Arlo (Reggie Absolom), a ten-year-old boy. Her brief, rushed explanation is that the boy is Peter’s son with a friend of hers, Leonora, with whom he slept one night — we glimpsed both women, seemingly in passing, in the opening scene — and she adds that Leonora has taken her own life. Rather than let the boy fall into the hands of her rather violent ex, Edison had promised her friend she’d leave him with Peter.

Naturally, party-boy Peter wants nothing to do with the kid, but Edison vanishes without a trace, impossible to track down, and our protagonist has no choice but to deal with the situation. And, in his own way, he handles it surprisingly well, folding Arlo somewhat into his circle of nightlife friends while trying to build him a life outside the party scene — something Peter, it turns out, evidently needed too. Arlo — a kid who, aside from the occasional tense scene, adapts to his new life with striking ease — is fascinated by this new New York world and by a father like Peter, who lets him be a DJ (or play at being one) and who has cool friends. And for Peter, a previously unthinkable world opens up, one of calm, affection, and even a possible lasting romance with a social worker (Diego Calva) who looks after Arlo.

Club Kid follows a predictable but endearing path, a classic «adult + child» format dear to American auteur cinema, from Paper Moon to C’mon C’mon, and countless other films in which an adult softens and grows more human through an initially fraught relationship with a child who may or may not be theirs. Firstman and Absolom make a great pair, bonding over shared musical taste (Cocteau Twins, Björk, Elliott Smith) and understanding each other in a way that surprises Peter himself. Something similar happens with most of his friend group, made up largely of trans people, for whom the boy becomes something like everyone’s beloved plaything. Obviously, there will be problems and conflicts you can see coming a mile away, but however predictable the journey, it’s a highly enjoyable ride.

Surrounded by a crew with real experience in American indie film, both in cinematography and editing, Firstman shows a confident hand visually, in the score (by Chilean electronic musician Cristobal Tapia de Veer) and, especially, in the performances, with an evenly strong cast across the board. It’s true the script doesn’t stray from the subgenre’s well-worn paths, and some supporting characters (like the eccentric neighbor and his peculiar roommate) offer little beyond easy comic relief. Even so, Club Kid manages to stay on that fine line between an independent, more or less realistic story and something that, at bottom, has quite a bit of classic fable in it.

What’s surprising, especially given its almost hardcore opening, is just how endearing, tender, and even wholesome the film ends up being. At a certain point, you might even think Firstman leans too far into conservatism in his portrait of Peter, making him more responsible than you’d expect. It’s genuinely hard to reconcile fatherhood with the kind of intense, daily nightlife the man was living, but his turnaround ends up being strikingly traditional, as if he were renouncing almost entirely the life he’d led up to that point. Peter’s radical change, and the surprising ease with which both of them adapt to a new life, may not be entirely believable — but it is, without a doubt, lovable. And in a moment as bitter and cruel as this one, a little love and tenderness is more than welcome. In the movies as in life.