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In the midst of writing and directing her first feature, Girlfight, Karyn Kusama was particularly impressed by two boxing films-- John Huston's Fat City (1972) and Robert Wise's 1949 film noir, The Set-Up. Like those films, Girlfight avoids the cliches of a utopian fantasy such as Rocky, about a working-class fighter who makes it to the top through hard work and determination. Kusama says she "didn't want to create a narrative in which there was a clear-cut ending or any triumph that was larger than life." She believes it's a "fantasy" for fighters to dream of the kind of success that remains elusive for most of them.
Besides her interest in showing the long odds in the world of prizefighting, Kusama also wanted to make a boxing film about a young woman. Girlfight tells the story of a teenage Latina from the Red Hook projects in Brooklyn named Diana Guzman (Michele Rodriguez), who channels her frustration and anger into boxing. The film shows that Diana's desire to fight comes in large part from an unhappy home life with an abusive single father, Sandro (Paul Calderon). As she trains hard with the help of a demanding but generous teacher, Hector (Jaime Tirelli), Diana develops enough strength and self-confidence to stand up to her father and hold her own in a relationship with another young fighter, Adrian (Santiago Douglas), whom she meets at the gym. In the film's riskiest but most impressive scene, Diana defeats her boyfriend to win an amateur tournament.
Sports films become plausible when they achieve enough realism, especially in action sequences, to evoke actual sporting events. Using carefully choreographed fight sequences, the mise-en-scene of the gym and the spaces where the characters live, and even the soundtrack, Kusama's film achieves an aura of verisimilitude), Kusama's film is triumphantly realistic. Even the need for fewer set-ups in a tight shooting schedule adds to the documentary-like look of the film. Director of photography Patrick Cady achieved Bazinian realism on a budget by using a hand-held camera to cover in a single take what would take several shots in a more analytical style. Kusama's careful attention to the environment of the story also allows her to show how class, race, and gender complicate the individual goals...