I haven’t cared about a boxing match since the original Rocky. That was in 1976. There has been a lot of boxing between then and now. There has been Ali and Sugar Ray and the entire career of Mike Tyson. There have also been approximately 50 more Rocky movies … and yet in that span of time I never got emotionally involved over a match -fictional or non- until the climax of Yolo, a film that found boxing only when it ran out of other plot points.
We know Du Leying (director/star Jia Ling) becomes a boxer from the outset. I’m not giving this away; the film starts with her strapping on gloves for her first professional fight. Then Yolo goes backwards a bunch … and then a bunch more to explain how she got there. It’s quite improbable.
Leying needs a win like few before her. The twentysomething (?) thirtysomething (?) loser boasts exactly nothing. Horribly overweight and estranged from not only society, but activity in general, Leying is bullied by both her mother and her sister as she lays in bed all day. Her best friend is marrying her boyfriend (ouch!). She’s called “diligent slug” by those who are kindest to her. It’s not just that she lacks ambition; Leying seems to lack anything resembling motivation, making her an easy target for her kin. Before long, she has a fight with her sister, leading to Leying’s departure from their shared apartment. I applaud this only in the sense that now Leying HAS to do something other than lie around all day. She has neither skills, nor prospects, nor a place to live, but now she has to act.
You would think that the boxing comes next, right? I mean, snubbed mentally and physically by your fam would naturally lead to a fight instinct taking over, right? Well, yes and no. See, Leying does indeed get an apartment and a waitressing job and -lacking for friends or hobbies or general interests- she finds the local gym next door to her restaurant. And yet, we’re still at least seven layers of plot before Leying starts lacing ‘em up.
Oh yeah, she does get into the boxing, sort of, but almost entirely because she thinks one of the boxing instructors, Hao Kun (Lei Jiayan) likes her. For a while, she treats her membership like a fangirl.
Before getting to Leying’s career as a pro fighter, however, we have to get through her relationship with Hao Kun and fight fixing and a job search gameshow and a sexual harassment. Honestly? It’s a wonder Du Leying ever strayed from her bed; I don’t think the world has ever been kind to her.
Yolo is a tale of both self-redemption and “better late than never.” Leying’s pain is not dissimilar to the experience of living, but it takes her quite some time to decide to control it and create circumstances by which she continues to lose, but on her terms, not those of society or her “friends” or her relatives. I thought the film took forever to get to Leying’s take control stage, but I was so satisfied when we got there that Leying’s performance in the ring is one of the key things I will take from the 2024 year in film. And it only means something because we sat through the two hours of nonsense preceding it. So … yay? Can’t say that I loved the film, but if you stay for all 129 minutes of Yolo, you will be moved by the experience.
There once lived a woman named Leying
A horribly overweight thing
Life, she had found
Beat her into the ground
Say, kid, have you ever considered boxing?
Rated PG-13, 129 Minutes
Director: Ling Jia
Writer: Shin Adachi, Yu Bu, Yupeng Guo
Genre: The loser chronicles
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Loser sympathizers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Bullies
