Toe to Toe

Toe to Toe

104 Minutes








It's no mistake that Emily Abt's newest feature length film, Toe to Toe, is set in Washington D.C. Although our nation's capital, it's also a city long synonymous with rampant economic and racial inequality; it's a city with massively high violent crime rates in areas not geographically distant from the Washington Monument and the Capitol building. It makes sense, then, that her story of two teenage girls with wildly different backgrounds and drives should unfold there. Making a movie about teenagers is hard to begin with, but throw racial politics, teenage sexuality and a healthy dose of parental estrangement in there, and the bar is raised.

Both Jesse (Louisa Krause) and Tosha (Sonequa Martin) attend an upper-class prep school and are fiercely competitive on the lacrosse team, but that's where the obvious comparisons end. Tosha is African-American, economically disadvantaged and obsessed with attending Princeton on a scholarship, goaded on by her callously righteous grandmother. Jesse is blonde, blue-eyed and lives in a mansion while her mother is on a vague humanitarian mission in Africa. She also has a reputation as the school slut. I mean, she literally has graffiti reading "SLUTSTER" scrawled across her locker. But more unlikely bonds have been forged over slimmer connections than lacrosse, and the two girls become friends; their mutual attraction to an Islamic student (Silvestre Rasuk) soon sours that, and as Jesse begins to spin out of control, Tosha finds herself caught between sympathy and a strange kind of hatred, born of envy.

But the strength of Toe to Toe isn't necessarily in the story, although writer/producer/director Abt, has certainly crafted an interesting one. It's in the strength and depth of these characters, none of whom are given the option to be one-dimensional or entirely guiltless. Like any teenagers, Jesse and Tosha are masses of hypocrisies. They're both in desperate need of acceptance from their peers and families, but don't have the tools to do so as outcasts of opposite kinds. They're alternately kind, protective, bitchy and uncaring of each other, pretty much how teenage girls are every day. Part of the difficulty in viewing a film like this is simply watching these characters perform the stupidest actions (or simply do nothing at all), when a healthier dose of perspective would tell them to simply talk to each other. But still, it's hard not feel Tosha's anguish at being harassed by her grandmother to continually be "strong" and vindicate all of African-American womanhood. It's easy to understand the link between Jesse's cold, washed-out home and her desire to draw attention and affection towards herself, whether it's trying to get the housekeeper to stay a few extra hours and hang out or to perform oral sex in a locker room.

Both Krause and Martin perform more than ably, largely ignoring the kind of excessive sullenness that cinematic teenagers so often wear as some kind of realism. Instead, they act more like teenagers actually do, full of fierce emotions, unable to be completely masked. And while the somewhat shaky, handheld camera work sometimes grows a little unsubtle in its desire to appear in the moment, the shots of D.C. suburbs and go-go dance clubs more than make up for it.

There's no simple answers in Toe to Toe, and that's as it should be. The kind of problems that both of the protagonists face are true to life and as valid in to themselves as to each other. Abt subtly parallels Tosha's crowded home life with Jesse's emptiness, but doesn't favor one over the other; neither does she excuse the impoverished girl for her actions when the tensions between the two come to a boiling point. Instead, she respects the viewers enough to simply create a story and let it come down to our own thoughts.

by Nathan Kamal