"Girlfight"

It's not hard to understand why some people are repulsed by boxing, but it's next to impossible to convince those people that the sport isn't more than two people beating each other up. Kusama's scenes of Diana's training are maybe the best demonstration of the intelligence and skill that goes into boxing that the movies have shown us. She achieves it by simply taking her time, allowing us to observe Diana's growing confidence and acumen as her trainer Hector (Jaime Tirelli in a very likable performance), the man who becomes the real father figure in her life, works to sharpen the ability he intuits in her. As Hector teaches Diana how to throw combinations, Kusama distinguishes between each type of punch so carefully that by midway through the movie she's educated us to distinguish a jab, a hook, a cross, an uppercut and how those punches work in combinations.

Each of Diana's bouts is shot differently, and Kusama and her cinematographer, Patrick Cady, use the simplest and most direct methods for allowing us to see Diana putting what she has learned to use, using an overhead camera to let us observe her footwork. Movies tend to turn boxing matches into primal/metaphysical battlegrounds, mythologizing the sport instead of elucidating it. Without doing anything fancy or denying the brutality of boxing, Kusama is alive to its visual beauty and the physical interplay between fighters in a way that is utterly unique in the movies. She's putting us inside Diana's boots, bringing us along with her as her training turns into instinct.

Kusama also surprises by avoiding the expected sentimentality of the clichis. The relationship between Diana and her father (Calderon gives a one-note performance, but he has been saddled with a one-note role) is weighted by the memory of her mother's suicide. Kusama doesn't patch things up between them after their inevitable confrontation, which is not only surprising but refreshing -- there's nothing that's more of a letdown than when a movie asks you to believe that an obvious son of a bitch is really just misunderstood. And I like the offhandedness of the scenes between Diana and Adrian (Santiago Douglas), the good-looking but not terribly bright fellow boxer she falls in love with. Their scenes are unforced, easy, the believable mating dance of two kids whose impulse to let go (emotionally as well as physically) competes with the discipline of their calling. It's a bummer that Adrian falls back on the most traditional thinking when he has to go up against Diana. (The obvious, understandable reason for objection is that she's a much better boxer.)

I wish Kusama were a better actor's director but perhaps that will come. Rodriguez was picked for the role out of an open cattle-call audition. She's undeniably striking, and when she gets to show her sleepy, sly smile, she lets you share Diana's pleasure in feeling alive and purposeful for the first time in her life. But Rodriguez hasn't received the director's help that would delineate her performance. Kusama allows Rodriguez to sneer into the camera far too much, and though she's a terrific, charismatically sullen subject, Diana's roiling, conflicted loyalties tend to remain hidden beneath her stony, resentful face. I hope her next role will take her in a different direction, perhaps even bring out the sense of sly comedy that her smile suggests. Filmmakers who see Rodriguez here must feel a little like Hector watching Diana spar and seeing her possibilities play out in their heads.

"Girlfight" is an easy movie to enjoy. I just wish it were a better one. While women boxers are struggling to achieve the same opportunities and paydays as their male counterparts, no one could argue with Kusama's assertion that sexism is hindering women who go into the sport. And while you can't deny that the attitudes of people who think women have no place in the ring contribute to those inequities, it's a shame Kusama wastes so much time on the small-time carping of men who'll never be anything but small-timers themselves. If she had made us understand that was where their objections came from, the film would have more depth. Watching Diana in action (or watching a pro like Rijker) the arguments about whether women belong in boxing blow away like so much fluff. Landing a punch, Diana is doing what she was born to do. That's the movie's real feminist triumph: an authentic nontraditional image of female beauty, one that's inseparable from strength.

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