New Archive:

September 2000 Issue, Volume 2

Redemption in the Ring
Andrew Bender reviews Girlfight

By Andrew Bender

Shortly after Diana, the main character in the film Girlfight, makes her first visit to a boxing gym, director Karyn Kusama shows us a very clever shot. A caretaker, shutting the place down for the night, turns off the bright overhead lights one by one, until all that's left is the light coming through a tiny doorway in the center of the screen. With this one image we understand that boxing, of all things, is to be Diana's path to a new beginning.

Part Karate Kid and part Mi Vida Loca, Girlfight is both tender and exhilarating. No surprise that it won the Best Directing Award for Kusama, her first directing outing--she also wrote the film-- and shared the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Michelle Rodriguez, who plays Diana, makes a new beginning herself here. It's her first time acting, or boxing for that matter, and the glowering Diana seems to come naturally to her. Fiercely protective of her family and her lone friend in her high school, Diana is forever angry, foulmouthed, unable to turn the other cheek, and prone to picking fights over the slightest offense. A sign in her boxing gym reads "when you're not training, someone else is training--to kick your ass," and it's a motto she might as well be wearing on a sandwich board around town.

Adolescence is always tough, but it seems to have hit Diana particularly hard--home in the projects, tumultuous school life, no great looker, mother who committed suicide, detached and demanding father (played by Paul Calderon, Pulp Fiction, Out of Sight). But truth be told, Diana's compounded her troubles with her behavior. She knows she has to break free of this cycle, but she doesn't know how, and instead of dealing with it she gets destructive.

That's where Hector the boxing coach steps in, played wonderfully by Jaime Tirelli (Brother from Another Planet, House of the Spirits), and Diana literally begs, steals and borrows her way into his tutelage.

As the lone female in the undeniably male milieu of the boxing stable, Diana constantly has to prove her worth to her fellow (in both senses) student boxers, to the stable's management, and, not least, to her father. Fortunately, the ring is one place where her toughness can be put to good use, and for the first time in her life she's confident, contending in featherweight matches around New York, shown in powerful slo-mo fight scenes.

She also contends with her first love, another young boxer from her gym played by the wiry Santiago Douglas, who's also appeared on TV's The Sopranos and Law and Order. His Adrian (I loved the Rocky reference) and Diana make a tremendously cute couple, and his charming need to avoid the Nasty before a bout leads to some of the most heartfelt makeout scenes you've seen since you were in high school.

Theodore Shapiro has written a wonderful score for this film, capturing the energy of the ring and the Latino environment; his previous work includes Prince of Central Park and Safe Men. Under the opening credits, rhythmic clapping is soon punctuated by castanets, building to a flamenco beat and guitar work that could have come from Enrique Iglesias or the Gipsy Kings. It gets better from there.

As in all good sports movies, Diana learns that the most important strength in the face of any challenge is not physical but mental, and as in all good romances, she learns that the ultimate test of that strength is the ability to open oneself up and be vulnerable. Something to take with you into the High Holidays.

L'Shana Tova.

Girlfight. Written and directed by Karyn Kusama; Starring: Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Santiago Douglas; Opens 29 September 2000; Rated R; Running time: 113 minutes.