Title: First Match
Director: Olivia Newman
Starring: Elvire Emanuelle, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jharrel Jerome
Rating: B+
Recommended?: Yes
Genre: Drama
Watched On: Netflix Instant (Netflix Original)
Mo (Elvire Emanuelle) is an angry, belligerent teenage girl in foster care craving a meaningful relationship with her ex-convict father, Darrel (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II,) who once seemed to have a promising as a wrestler but has since lapsed into desperation and crime. When her father gets out of prison, Mo joins an all-boys wrestling team to impress her father, but her hot temper and volatile behavior regularly gets her in trouble with the coach and her peers. Then Darrel starts manipulating Mo into participating in illegal underground fights, and she finds herself at a crossroads in her life, torn between her fierce love for her father and her dreams of a better life.
First Match mostly manages to transcend the clichés of the sports underdog movie, and the lead actress, Elvire Emanuelle, is nothing short of fantastic. She brings so much emotion to the character of Mo, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is outstanding as well as her ne’er-do-well criminal father. Mo is a protagonist who is initially very hard to sympathize with, but who gradually becomes easier to care about over the course of the film. First Match overall just has a very real vibe, it’s less about the sport of wrestling and more about the relationships between the characters. It’s dark, but has a redemptive sense of hope at the end, offering a sense of hard-earned sense of closure for Mo.
I liked the stereotypes this film subverted, like the fact that Mo and her best (and friend) and friend Omari didn’t become romantic interests over the course of the film. He was there, but not unconditionally, lending richness and ambiguity to his character. First Match has a vivid sense of place and refreshingly morally ambiguous characters, it also makes the smart decision not to end the movie with the wrestling finals, instead focusing on Mo’s character arc in the film’s final moments.
There’s less emphasis put on the coach’s character than you might expect, he’s there to push Mo in the right direction but that’s pretty much it. Instead the film pays more attention to Mo, Darrel, Omari, Mo’s crush Malik, and Mo’s foster mother Lucila, who was probably the character who I had the most compassion for in the film. Watching her lose her foster child, who she hoped to eventually adopt, to the infant’s mother was just heart wrenching. One of the pleasures of this film was watching Mo and Lucila bond and become more like a mother and daughter, coming from a place of mutual distrust and dislike to a place of caring. First Match is a coming-of-age film in the purest sense, and a reminder that being a parent doesn’t always mean claiming responsibility and the people who truly care about us sometimes come from unexpected places.
Sarah's Corner 