Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Starring: Kali Reis, Daniel Henshall, Tiffany Chu, Michael Drayer, Lisa Emery, Kimberly
Guerrero, Kevin Dunn
Perhaps the sport which best serves cinema is boxing. Within a medium
where representation of sport is often ill fated - maybe because narrative
cinema is structured by plot and signalled outcomes, whereas sport works
within ephemeral circumstances of chance and opportunity - boxing takes
home the belt. I think this is because the sight of two people hitting
each other over and over until the other falls down - dancing, dodging,
diving - is inherently cinematic (after all, the development of action
cinema can be traced directly back to Douglas Fairbanks ushering in the
swashbuckling era, which is the same as boxing but with rapiers). Yet
boxing also works in cinema because of the very concentration of the
sport, the gladiatorial compaction of two people in a square space sharing
a singular purpose: in its quintessential simplicity, boxing has rich
capacities for metaphor. The American Dream is microcosmed in the boxing
film, with its prole protagonists undergoing the physical trials, the
hardest of knocks, to eventually achieve success and celebration.
Josef Kubota Wladyka and Kali Reis’ incendiary
Catch the Fair One (Wladyka directs Reis, writing a
screenplay from her story) is located within the Native American community
of Buffalo (speaking of cinematic, surely the most ugly/beautiful city in
the world?), and centres on Reis’ Kaylee. Kaylee is an ex-champion boxer,
who still trains between thankless shifts at a short order diner, and
restless nights in a cramped hostel. We see kids thrill at spotting their
favourite boxer, and witness Kaylee’s physical formidability, and we
wonder what preceding knock down has led her to this insalubrious state of
affairs.
In Catch the Fair One’s early scenes, the mottle shaded mise-en-scene is crammed: the diner,
the hostel, everywhere Kaylee goes is chock full of people. She is
suffocated by the insolence of customers, the ignominy of sharing a mass
shower with strangers. In the ring, however, she is free. Reis is herself
one of the greatest welterweight fighters in the world, and the sparring
sequences are given authenticity by her trained choreography. The camera
always objectifies, and the sight of Reis working the ring, with her
tattoos, piercings, and tight knots of muscle, is vivid spectacle. Society
inevitably enforces hegemonies of race and class structures, but the ring
is a meritocracy.
Although not entirely free, however, as it transpires that Kaylee’s
teenaged sister has gone missing at some point. Weeta is the reason why
Kaylee meets with dodgy people in vans at night seeking information, spars
against massive heavyweight blokes and sleeps with a razor embedded in her
cheek (enforced pain and suffering is Catch the Fair One’s central motif). In flashback we see Kaylee’s sister leave the gym
where her sister trains, never to be seen again; in the support groups
Kaylee skulks about in we get an overwhelming impression of people simply
disappearing.
The film intimates, in a similar manner to the recent
Don’t Say Its Name, that Weeta’s ethnicity and social class render her unimportant to the
authorities, a deeply frightening
real life issue. It falls to Kaylee to locate her sister within the dark underworld of
human trafficking, and her ensuing undercover operation is as raw as a
bare-knuckle bar brawl - my notes cite Requiem for a Dream, and it turns out that Aronofsky, the cinematic De Sade of physically
punishing protagonists, is Catch the Fair One’s executive producer. Every graphic moment is justified in the film, but
be warned!
When Kaylee does catch up with the slavers who may or may not have
abducted Weeta, the framing switches to wide spaces to best depict an open
countryside far from the blotched confines of the city. This is too much
space, space people can easily disappear in, space where there is nowhere
to hide. The sprawling houses which these people live in are obscenely
palatial, too, with soft amber lighting up dense mahogany and kitchens
larger than the diner where Kaylee scrapes a living. We are offered a
bitter truth about capitalism, and the exploitation inherent in its
avaricious ideologies: for some people to be this rich, a lot of others
need to be that poor. You’ll want to punch someone yourself (Or worse. I’m
not a violent person but human traffickers do not deserve to be alive. The
world would simply be better off without them). Human beings are bought
and sold, the bodies of impoverished women - fighting for the edification
of crowds, forced into the sex trade - are commodified. The only recourse
is to fight back, to hit harder than the blows you receive. Forever and
ever. Until one day you too are knocked down, and the count is final.
Catch the Fair One is on Netflix UK/ROI now.