Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Lee Joo-young, Lee Jun-hyuk, Yeom Hye-ran
Intro:
…an admirable effort that is difficult to wholeheartedly recommend.
Baseball Girl, the feature debut for writer/director/editor Choi Yun-tae, is a curveball within the larger spectrum of sports cinema. In depicting the story of aspiring baseball player Joo Soo-in (Lee Joo-young) and her determination to play for a professional team, it manages to both stay well within the all-too-familiar tropes of its genre, and yet approach those same tropes in a way few others even attempt.
As an example of gender politics through the wide, wide world of sports, seeing Joo Soo-in’s hardened passion for the sport and making it to the literal big leagues is quite bracing, anchored exquisitely by Lee’s quiet but laser-focused performance. It also benefits from the unusual pacing of the narrative around her, which relies less on adrenaline-fueled tautness and more on sombre contemplation. Only when the film reaches the hour mark are we even proffered with the chance to see Joo play an actual game, with focus on training and, more pointedly, getting someone else to give her the chance to even play.
The way it delves into the inspirational element is at once thorough and oddly cold. Using Joo as a springboard for a wider view of women’s treatment in various creative fields, the film aims for solidarity, with dialogue directed towards Joo incredulous that when she says she wants to play professional baseball, she actually wants to play.
Baseball Girl feels like an unfortunately compromised production, as the balancing of cool and quiet character study and inspiring athleticism ends up taking the bite out of both. There’s something commendable about it even attempting this tightrope walk in the first place, and Lee Joo-young carries a lot of the film’s slippery moments, but since it’ll likely turn out too downbeat for sports junkies, and trying too hard to channel Van Halen’s Jump for the long-haul crowd, it remains an admirable effort that is difficult to wholeheartedly recommend.
