Movie Review: Step

Step **** / *****

Directed by: Amanda Lipitz.

 

Step is a documentary about the senior year of the founding class of a charter school named The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women – founded in 2009, with the goal of getting each and every one of its graduates to higher education. The film focuses on the Step team – and more specifically a few of the young women on that team – as they deal with various challenges throughout that year. It is a film that is almost effortless in showing us their world, their families, their struggles and, yes, some amazing Step routines – that are among the reasons why the film is the rare documentary crowd pleaser.

 

The young woman we spend the most time with is Blessin Giraldo – who has a larger than life personality, is a natural on camera, and a leader on the Step team. Things fell apart last year, when she missed too much school, her grades fell, and she wasn’t allowed to compete with the team. She’s trying to get back on track in her senior year – but it’s not easy. There is also Cori Grainger – the class valedictorian, who has her sights set high – she wants to go to Johns Hopkins – yet her newly blended family has a lot of kids to support, and cannot always even keep the lights on, so her path isn’t much easier. Then there is Tayla Solomon, who can only role her eyes, when her larger than life mother gets involved in the Step routines herself – or embarrasses her in front of everyone when she confronts her about her falling grades – which coincide with the arrival of a potential boyfriend. Her mother ain’t having that.

 

In many ways, Step follows the formula of many other crowd pleasing docs – as it follows the girls as they practice their routines, under the eye of their new coach, struggle with home lives, and build towards a big, final competition. Yet, I think it goes somewhat beyond that as well in its depiction of Baltimore, and in the multi-generational portrait of black women. The film was shot in 2015 – after the death of Freddie Gray – and we see murals dedicated to him, and the Black Lives Matter movement, is ingrained in everything – including the choreography. It’s a reminder that as talking heads – mostly white – still debate Black Lives Matter on TV as if it’s a potential terrorist group (which is ridiculous), in the African American communities in America, it’s less of a debate, and more of a fact of life. In terms of the portrait of multiple generations of black women, we see the girls and their mothers – and their dedicated teachers, counsellors, principals, etc. – some of whom made mistakes in their own lives, and do not want to see these girls do the same thing. While in other communities in America, teenagers screw up, and get second, third or fourth chances, that’s not what it’s like here – where if things don’t go well, we see what will happen.

 

All that sounds heavy, but it’s effortlessly interwoven into the movie, in a way that doesn’t beat you over the head with its message. This isn’t a “hyperlink” doc, that looks at an issue, and then encourages you to “get involved” in the end credits – but rather a portrait of these young women that is inspiring – but still leaves you concerned with what happens after the credits roles. As the step teacher says at one point, they are about to leave a small, all-girls school in which everyone cares about what they do, and enter a world where that’s just not the case. Oh, and the Step routines are amazing to watch. I went in thinking they would be the reason to see the film – and only gradually realized that they are the fun highlight of a better doc, more complete doc than I was expecting.