The power of girls doing some nonsense together

This week, I was watching this mini-documentary shared in the Liftcord of women doing parkour. It is called Gatecrasher.

I love this little film in part because it has no plot, no narrative, no characters. I welcome stuff like this a lot lately: movies and books that are tonal and conceptual but not wrung within an inch of their lives for elevator pitches that marketing/salespeople find “compelling.” (Like Jeanne Dielman, but ideally not so bleak.)

The main theme that jumps out at me first is that of failure. As opposed to a highlight reel of the women’s sickest stunts, most of the film is long segments of them attempting and failing different parkour sequences: trying to jump off one wall and to grab a ledge above, or to jump across a gap to one ledge and bounce off it across another gap to grab another ledge, and failing failing failing. It hurts, it sucks, it’s annoying.

The women aren’t even showing any progress for the most part; they aren’t failing, but getting a little closer each time, for instance. They are attempting, and each time, a new different thing goes wrong, or all of the things don’t come together in exactly the right way, and they fall down again. And this is even before we’ve seen any of what went into developing the base skills of doing a sport like this, long jumps and pull-ups and flips and falling down in ways that don’t break all your limbs.