Drew Burnett Gregory is back at TIFF, reporting with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond.
At the premiere of the Christy Martin biopic Christy, the TIFF audience cheered for its main character. They cheered when she overcame a moment of adversity and they cheered when a title card at the end tied her story in a hopeful bow. Christy Martin faced challenges, but we’re reassured that just like in the ring, she fought back, she got up, and she won.
It’s hard to begrudge a film for rousing an audience, for playing to simplicity and succeeding. There’s a place for sports biopics that hit the genre beats without risk, especially ones that focus on women. But Christy Martin’s life story spends the entirety of this film pushing against those narrative restrictions. There’s a complexity to her experience of queerness and a weight to her experience of domestic violence that feel ill-served by this bland approach. Some stories are more interesting than inspiration.
When we first meet Christy, she’s a short-haired dyke whose sexuality is causing her West Virginian family distress. After winning an amateur boxing competition, she’s scouted and referred to a coach named Jim Martin (Ben Foster). His initial disinterest in working with a female boxer turns into a controlling obsession. He tells her to grow her hair out, he buys her pink boxing shorts, and he restricts her from seeing her ex-girlfriend. Christy wants a way out of her hometown so she listens. It’s a cruel trap that to leave where she comes from she has to conform to its same conventions. But she does it. She buys into the fantasy Jim sells. She even agrees to marry him.
Christy plays a role and, in terms of external success, it serves her well. Yes, she’s a remarkable boxer who trains hard. But part of her appeal to the public at large, part of what allows her to become a star, is her insistence that she’s just a normal wife who happens to be great at boxing. She continues to wear pink. She dismisses her opponents as dykes to the press. The film frames this presentation as part of her personality and rise to fame rather than another element of Jim’s abuse. We aren’t given an opportunity to feel conflict in Christy’s success, because it doesn’t fit within the beats of the genre. When Christy is on top, the film doesn’t want us to question the cost.
Part of the problem is the film’s casting. While Sydney Sweeney gives a perfectly fine performance, this feels like a role that would’ve been well-served by casting someone known to present more masculine. We’ve spent the last couple decades talking about who can and can’t play certain roles, but often it’s not a matter of can’t and more a matter of wasted potential. When Sydney Sweeney makes herself femme, she feels more normal to us. The film would’ve benefited from the opposite effect. Not every audience brings the same knowledge to a film, but there’s a way to use celebrity. Of course, this would require there to be more masc-presenting celebrities who are famous enough to get a movie made. In lieu of that reality, the film at least casts Katy O’Brien as Christy’s opponent/future wife Lisa Holewyne and their scenes together are some of the film’s best parts.
The basic choice in lead actress is expected and will probably garner the film awards buzz. (The Oscars love a transformation!) The basic filmmaking is less forgivable. Throughout Christy, director David Michôd relies on slow dollies in and out of serious moments. Sometimes this creates a sinister lurking feeling that hints toward the impending violence. But too often it creates a level of remove, the sense we are observing Christy rather than experiencing life with her. The relentless melodramatic score that’s present even when the camera finally does lock in close is even worse. It tries to tell the audience how to feel in every moment and, for me, had the opposite effect. Once again, it makes this a story to witness rather than empathize with.
The boxing sequences are just as flat. With the exception of one match that utilizes a cliché slow-motion technique all of the boxing is captured with the same handheld simplicity. Tension doesn’t change depending on where Christy is at in her career or who she is fighting or what’s happening outside the ring. There are only the scenes where she’s dominating and the one scene where she’s struggling. Martin Scorsese said that he approached every fight sequence in Raging Bull like different dance numbers in a musical, each one with its own personality and techniques and goals. Not every boxing movie needs to be Raging Bull, but some personality would have served these moments well. Toward the end of the film, Christy talks about the quiet bliss she experiences in the boxing ring. A film that was interested in placing us with Christy might have imitated her experience through form.
Christy doesn’t experiment with form and it doesn’t take risks. It doesn’t want to explore the complexities within the life of Christy Martin, now Christy Salters. Instead it feels made to only elicit the following responses: what a harrowing story, what an inspiring ending, and what a transformation for Sydney Sweeney. I’m sure it will garner all three.
Registered Republican “Great jeans {genes}” Sydney Sweeney? Hard pass (and likely forever).