WOOLFWOMEN offers thrills and scattered insights into a crew of downhill skateboarders
WoolfWomen
Written and Directed by Jennifer Schauerte and Marchella De Angelis
Starring Jennifer Schauerte, Jasmijn Hanegraef, Anna Pixner, Lisa Peters, Alejandra Gutierrez
Runtime: 1 hour, 16 minutes
Available in Select Theaters June 8th
by Joe Carlough, Staff Writer
WoolfWomen follows Jenny Jungle and her group of professional downhill skateboarding friends, who affectionately call themselves the “Woolf Pack,” and Jenny “Mama Woolf,” as they traverse Europe via campervan on their way to Sumela, an ancient monastery in Turkey. Occasionally, they stop to skate down extreme and tremendous hills and highways, in what are the most exciting moments in an otherwise scattered fly-on-the-wall documentary.
The movie opens with a lengthy bit of narration about Jenny Scheurte, known as Jenny Jungle, detailing her life, motivations, and the specifics of a bad injury she’d suffered during filming. We learn about the recent, crushing death of her father, and how new she actually is to downhill skateboarding. In an effort to push back against a growing depression, and to test her limits after healing from a particularly gnarly leg injury, Scheurte and company decide to make a pilgrimage to a beautiful Turkish Monastery for fun, and for the camaraderie. The WoolfWomen offer their own glowing compliments and add depth to Jenny’s story. The bond between the women is warm, deep, and obvious. Their journey is punctuated by daring downhill skates on massive European highways. I was on the edge of my seat during each downhill run, and even hearing the women detailing exceptional runs (and exceptional injuries) was simply awesome.
What the documentary lacks is a sense of cohesion. I never felt I got to really know who each of the WoolfWomen were, and they were introduced so quickly–and often appearing for a talking head segment before being properly introduced–that it was hard for me to remember who was who during the film. There are minutes-long stretches of narration, music video cameos, swimming montages, multiple slo-mo sequences set to Yo-Yo Ma’s cello music, super interesting interviews that usually felt cut short, and lots of drone footage of the places they go. Altogether, I often found myself playing catch-up–wait, where are they now? Who are they talking about? Why are they fishing? In one sequence, they paddle in fast-motion on a makeshift raft through boggy water, which is then followed by a music-video-esque sequence of them swimming topless in beautiful, choppy water–Is that the same place they paddled to? The vibe of the doc felt a little inside-baseball (and if you don’t get the reference, I’m not explaining it to you. Just kidding. If I already knew who the WoolfWomen were, I think I would have appreciated it a lot more. Maybe the film was made in a style popular among extreme sports videos, and I’m just not clued in. The film’s website does a lovely job providing context for the documentary, and I might even recommend using it as a primer before watching.
In all, WoolfWomen is an enjoyable watch, with some truly breathtaking scenes. It does a lovely job exhibiting the thrills–and danger!–of downhill skateboarding, and has enough beautiful scenes that often feeling out of the loop didn’t always matter: it was just great to look at. Yes, it’s true, I absolutely did look up downhill skateboarding on YouTube after watching, and enjoyed comparing footage from this film to that of Carts of Darkness (2008), the lo-fi documentary about the occasionally-unhoused men in Vancouver who ride shopping carts daringly fast throughout the city’s streets. As someone who’s quite averse to terribly physical injury, just watching this doc was enough for me, thanks!