A thin best actress Oscar race was jolted on Friday afternoon by the Toronto International Film Festival’s world premiere of David Michod’s Christy, a drama centering on a performance by Sydney Sweeney as the trailblazing female boxer Christy Martin, which was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation in the Princess of Wales Theater. Sweeney, who was also a producer of the film, gives a committed, showy, impressive turn as Martin — one that Martin herself has vocally applauded, including during an emotional post-screening Q&A — and believe it or not, I think she may get nominated.
Sweeney, who is just 27, became a world-famous actress and sex symbol through the HBO drama series Euphoria and The White Lotus, both of which brought her Emmy nominations. Recently, though, she has become a polarizing person, with her political affiliation, her dating life and, yes, her jeans commercial, all causing a lot of controversy. But even her skeptics, upon seeing Christy, may have to acknowledge her considerable commitment and talent (which was previously most evident in the little-seen 2023 TV film Reality, in which she played American intelligence leaker Reality Winner, and for which she deserved an Emmy nomination).
In Christy, Sweeney, donning short black hair and a muscular physique that she built through diet, exercise and boxing training over a period of months, looks nothing like herself as Martin, née Salters, a West Virginian who stumbled into a boxing career in the 1980s and dominated her sport as no woman had before — all while remaining a closeted lesbian and suffering increasingly terrible abuse at the hands of her considerably older coach/husband Jim (Ben Foster, also unrecognizable).
The film’s depiction of a female fighter’s rise is somewhat familiar — we’ve seen variations of it before with Michelle Rodriguez in Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight (2000), Hilary Swank in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Halle Berry in Bruised (2020), which Berry herself directed — and a film about a gifted female athlete being subjected to horrific domestic abuse has also been done before, very impressively, in I, Tonya (2017). But the performances by Sweeney, as the lead, and Foster, in support, as well as the specifics of the true story that inspired Christy, help to keep this one engaging and memorable.
In terms of Christy’s awards fate, a lot will depend on the abilities of Black Bear, one of the production companies behind it, to effectively distribute and campaign for it; Christy will be the first film ever released through the company’s new distribution arm, which has given it an awards-friendly theatrical release date of Nov. 7. Fairly or not, it will also hinge upon Sweeney’s willingness and ability to address the extracurricular things that are currently distracting people from her work.