Reflections

Shadow Boxers

35mm, 72 min., 1999 (RP).

"Is my make-up all right?" Not a question you're likely to hear from George Foreman anytime soon, but still one uttered within spitting distance of the squared circle in Rankowsky's portrait of women in professional boxing. The offhand comment -- from a Golden Gloves Flyweight champ seconds after winning the big fight -- says as much about the increasingly acceptable subgenre known as women's boxing as anything else in the film. Rankowsky saves the best bits of her portrait for Dutch wunderkind Lucia Rijker, Women's Boxing Federation Junior Welterweight champeen and the tough-as-nails focus of the film. The questions Rankowsky poses -- from gender discrimination to a woman's place in society that has encouraged but never fully accepted the idea of two "girls" duking it out in front of hordes of testosterone-crazed, stogie-chomping, adenoidal males -- take as much of a beating as her subjects. Footage of male champs Oscar de la Hoya and Evander Holyfield giving credit to Rijker for her skills, strength, and beauty are intercut with brutal shots of furious fisticuffs action seamlessly captured -- both in grainy black-and-white and bloody, sweat-strewn color -- by cinematographers Anthony Hardwick and Tony Wolberg. This isn't your daddy's catfight.