Teenager Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) has been dismissed by everyone: her school, her father.
When she visits a local boxing gym where her brother Tiny (Ray Santiago) trains, she sees an opportunity to make something for herself.
After convincing boxing coach Hector (Jaime Tirelli), Diana finds out that training is not the only obstacle she has to overcome:
Her father Sandro’s (Paul Calderón) disdain, misogyny and, most complicated of all, first love…
Girlfight is the introduction to filmmaker Karyn Kusama and the launching pad for Michelle Rodriguez.
While it has the architecture of a sports movie, the film’s approach is more elliptical and minimalist.
The camera is positioned at a remove or close and tight. We are both spectator and participant, as the main character’s relationship with the sport grows more secure. Like her, the viewer is a stranger to this new and more aggressive environment.
Diana’s character is presented through action, with Rodriguez’s natural intensity and presence as the anchor.
Diana is a fascinating character, and the film is fortunate to have a legitimate movie star in Rodriguez to embody her.
The opening shot is starmaking - Rodriguez is introduced, slouched against a locker in a long shot, isolated from the blur of moving students.
And then the camera gets closer, until her face fills the frame and her eyes lift to glare straight down the lens.
It is raw, palatable power - and in an instant, we know exactly who she is.
In the early scenes, Diana is short-tempered and prone to violence.
However, her violence is never unmotivated or antagonistic: she attacks a girl who insulted her friend, and she strikes a boxer at the gym because he punched her brother during sparring. When we meet her, Diana has something to prove, but no outlet.
She protects people she cares about, especially her brother.
Diana’s rage is given reason and context. She is constantly discounted, by her school, by her father and by the people at the boxing gym. She is dismissed for being a girl, and also for not having attributes associated with femininity.
In contrast, her brother Tiny is the focus of their father’s attention, but he is more interested in art than boxing.
The film is most interesting for what it infers about the family, and Diana’s origins.
It is revealed late in the piece that Sandro beat up their mother, but prior to this revelation, the threat of violence looms over the trio’s dynamic.
There is a simmering tension between Sandro and his kids, and Paul Calderón’s performance - mostly hunched at the dining table - radiates a tension that renders any flashback redundant.
When Diana beats her father up, she directly addresses the domestic violence which has dominated their lives. She also points out how alike she and her father are, even though he ‘look[s] right through’ her.
Diana may be interested in boxing, but she has not internalised her father’s misogyny - throughout the film, her remarks show an honesty about patriarchy. At one point during a conversation about the dangers of the city, she refers to the danger of getting assaulted in a stairwell (whether this is a personal story or not is left unsaid).
Other characters are constantly mischaracterizing Diana - including her love interest, Adrian (Santiago Douglas), another fighter at the gym.
When they get together, Adrian rejects sex because of an upcoming fight - a myth of masculine power being sapped by feminine wiles. This idea returns when events force them to compete in the same bout.
All Diana wants, throughout the movie, is to be treated with respect.
This extends to the way the boxing scenes are shot:
The early boxing scenes are shot wide, showing Diana’s lack of prowess and focus.
The later fights are inside the ring, with fighters attacking the camera - Diana is in the same position to the camera as her opponent, and granted the same level of power and status. This becomes particularly important during her final fight with Adrian, when the stakes have become personal.
By the end of the movie, Diana has charted her own course, and gained the respect she deserves.
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