In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
In the high school context, “girl fight” usually means hair pulling and blouse tearing and a spectacle to be enjoyed by young men. Karyn Kusama’s debut feature film Girlfight is about something different: a high school girl (Michelle Rodriguez in her first speaking role) pouring her frustrations at an environment that wants to limit her future into becoming a real boxer and coming into herself in the process.
When we first meet Diana Guzman (Rodriguez), she’s standing against a wall of lockers at her high school as the other students pass in front of her, her green jacket contrasting with the red lockers and her characteristic glare warning everyone to keep their difference. The exaggeratedly feminized appearance of most of the other girls is not for her, and neither is the instinct to defer to the males around her. So it’s no surprise that within three minutes she’s in a fight, defending one of her friends, and throwing real punches rather than pawing the air. Turns out it’s her fourth fight of the semester, and as the exasperated school principal berates her, Diana’s bored expression says “Lady, you don’t have a clue about my life” clearer than words ever could.
Things aren’t great at home either, where she and her brother Tiny (Ray Santiago) live with their father Sandro (Paul Calderón) in a housing project. Machismo reigns: Sandro’s friends make remarks about her maturing body while both Diana and Tiny are expected to conform to narrow gender roles. Tiny has talent and interest in art and wants to develop it, but because he’s a boy he has to take boxing lessons, an endeavor for which he has no aptitude, and his dreams of attending art school are summarily dismissed. Diana, being a girl, is expected to do all the housework (since her mother isn’t there) and otherwise Sandro mostly ignores her—in fact, when she shows up at Tiny’s gym to pay his trainer Hector (Jaime Tirelli), the latter says he didn’t know Sandro had another kid.
Diana finds an outlet for her anger in the same boxing gym where Tiny trains, stealing the money to pay Hector until Tiny starts giving her the money Sandro allocates for his lessons. In classic movie style, boxing becomes the center of her world, and there are many training sequences as well as a few matches. They’re pretty convincing, particularly given that Rodriguez and Douglas Santiago, who plays her main adversary, had only four months of boxing training before filming began.
There’s a lot to like in Girlfight besides a heartfelt story of a young woman making it in her own way—a propulsive score by Theodore Shapiro that complements the action, great use of color by cinematographer Patrick Cady and production designer Stephen Beatrice, effective use of location shooting that makes it all feel real—but none of it would work without an inspired performance by Michelle Rodriguez. She had played only extra parts previously to this film, and Kusama said her audition was a disaster, but there was something about Rodriguez that made Kusuma choose her over 300 other actresses, and the rest is history.
Girlfight was snubbed by the Oscars but won the Prix de la jeunesse for foreign films at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival and picked up quite a few other awards on the festival circuit, including the Grand Jury Prize for Drama and the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance and a Special Mention FIPRESCI Prize at the Ghent International Film Festival, where the film was commended for “astonishingly affecting handling of stereotypes” and featuring “young people crossing the boundaries of common gender images and social conventions.” | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1219
Technical details: length; color or B&W; screen ratio; language.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray
Extras: audio commentary by writer/director Karyn Kusama; video interview with Kusama; interviews with editor Plummy Tucker and composer Theodore Shapiro; storyboard-to-film featurette narrated by Kusama, and the film’s trailer.
Fun Fact: Indie screenwriter/director John Sayles provided the funding for this film after the previously-arranged financing fell through shortly before shooting was to begin (he also plays the world’s most boring science teacher).
Parting Thought: Who had the better feature debut: writer/director Karyn Kusama or actor Michelle Rodriguez? Given that both have gone on to distinguished careers, so I’d call it a technical draw.
