Kiki

As underground and DIY as the kiki scene might be, it’s still highly organized, and part of what Kiki expresses is this community organization as a strategy for survival. The struggle is real, and it’s hard to imagine how they keep pushing that boulder up the hill — being fully themselves in the face of so much hardship — but they are tough, and united.

Kiki shows us a group of brave and beautiful souls for whom the struggle is, unfortunately, probably about to get even harder.

Kiki often casts a rueful gaze, but it’s also exuberant and alive, and never despairing. It leaves you with the bracing sense that however tough and resilient its subjects might be forced to become, their hope of a better, more tolerant future will never go out of style.

An uplifting sense emerges of the resilience through community of youth who are marginalized, abandoned, isolated, bullied or sexually exploited.

With music by Qween Beat, Kiki shows the new generation of the ballroom scene, their care for one another, their awareness of the struggles ahead, their determination to be themselves, against all odds. They are scared, but they are strong.

Regrettably, Kiki seems far less interested in entertainment than activism.

The love these characters have for their lifestyle is obvious, as is their reasons for rejecting mainstream society for it, but the joy they receive from it is not conveyed to the viewer. Without that, Kiki is a decent survey of its chosen topic, but rarely anything more.