Gold­en Girl – first look review

Gold­en Girl, Susan­na Edwards’ film about Sweden’s first WBC world title hold­er in women’s box­ing, Fri­da Wall­berg, opens with a quote from leg­endary box­er Rocky Graziano: ​“The fight for sur­vival is the fight.” It shows us just that. Start­ing in 2010, not long after Wall­berg won her first title, the film fol­lows her train­ing and work­ing towards more fights; try­ing to retain her sta­tus as the world num­ber one and keep the belt in Swe­den. Not only a cham­pi­on in what is still seen as a man’s world, she is also a sin­gle moth­er try­ing to pro­vide for her young daugh­ter. Need­less to say, Wall­berg is extreme­ly tough. We see her train­ing to the point of tears, the agony writ­ten across her face. But she refus­es to give up.

See­ing such a pret­ty young woman sport­ing black eyes with pride is an incon­gru­ous image, and indeed, Wall­berg ini­tial­ly did not want to be filmed. How­ev­er after see­ing Edwards’ film Sun­shad­ow, about Spain’s most famous female mata­dor, she final­ly agreed. Wall­berg is a shy char­ac­ter, as evi­denced by her awk­ward­ness in inter­views and at press con­fer­ences, but there’s some­thing com­pelling about her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, her deter­mi­na­tion and her strength of body and demeanour. She describes her­self at one point as ​“cold but with feel­ings,” and hav­ing tak­en up box­ing at the ten­der age of 10, it’s clear that she is most at home in the ring.

The film is tense and atmos­pher­ic – we des­per­ate­ly want Wall­berg to win and Edwards shows the fights in all their vio­lence and glo­ry. Slow motion shots detail the grace and beau­ty of what is a bru­tal sport. It isn’t easy watch­ing the pun­ish­ment Wall­berg metes out to her­self and oth­ers. There is always the feel­ing that peo­ple around her, includ­ing a new boyfriend, are exploit­ing Wall­berg and there is a gen­uine­ly heart­break­ing moment where it appears that the only per­son who looks like they actu­al­ly care about her is her opponent.

“I can’t defend the sport but I admit there is some­thing deeply exis­ten­tial about it,” Edwards says, ​“you have to stand in that ring and face the unknown.” Edwards has also stat­ed that she set out to make a female Rocky and in that sense she has suc­ceed­ed. It will be inter­est­ing to see what sub­ject she tack­les next.