Candy: A Skater’s Mind (2022)

Directed by: Ruud Lenssen | 65 minutes | documentary

CANDY JACOBS WINS OLYMPIC GOLD IN TOKYO! This happy headline will have been a regular occurrence in the dreams of the Venlo skateboarder ever since it was announced that skateboarding is an official Olympic sport. Documentary ‘Candy: A Skater’s Mind’ by Ruud Lenssen is fortunately not so unsubtle, but Candy’s dream is of course clear from the start. For those who follow the news a bit, it is not a spoiler, and the film does not work towards the anticlimax due to the non-chronological structure; but once in the Olympic village Candy tested positive for covid-19 and that put a definitive line through her Olympic dream.

‘Candy: A Skater’s Mind’ jumps back and forth in history. Pretty soon we see Candy crying into the camera indicating that she is ‘fucked’. A positive Corona test. A dream shattered. There go your years of intensive preparation. The word disappointment is an understatement, because how do you process something like that, when you also have to be locked up as an ADHD person in a hotel room of just 20 square meters, where you have to beg for some fresh air for days (if only by a window open)?

Little by little we get to know Candy. Her tattoos, her dress style: it’s all part of who she is. “I really only have skate clothes”. That identity goes a long way; skating controls her every second of the day. Even in a forest, without a skateboard, she sees images of tricks before her. If she couldn’t skate, she wouldn’t know who she is. Candy herself indicates that it has been her salvation as a child and we feel that too. Also nice is the short conversation she has with curious children in the park. “Guess how many times I fall in a day?”

Selfish, she also calls herself. She is so absorbed in her Olympic dream and her sport that there is little time for other people and things. In a single scene where family says goodbye at a party before she leaves for Tokyo, everything revolves around her too. The same when she meets acquaintances in the center. She feels very strengthened by her parents, who give up everything to let her play sports. Her mother’s breast cancer was a big blow to the family, but it seems Candy’s injury in the run-up to the Olympics was more than that. Still, the bond between parent and child is good, which you can see beautifully in the touching scene when Mom shaves Candy’s head with clippers.

‘Candy: A Skater’s Mind’ is a beautiful portrait of a beautiful person. You don’t have to be a skateboarding fan to appreciate this movie – although seeing the tricks Candy performs with her skateboard will make your jaw drop. But the feeling of working towards something and then facing a huge disappointment is universal. Ruud Lenssen has made an empathetic, interesting film about an athlete who will hopefully be able to show what she has to offer in Paris in 2024.