Fighting With My Family
The advantages of this time of year are oddball, hard-to-place movies such as “Fighting With My Family,” which doesn’t fit into any particular category, but — partly for that reason — is refreshing and worth seeing.
It’s the story of the female wrestler Paige, who is only 26, so this biopic comes a bit early, but it’s a welcome film all the same, part comedy and part classic sports story. Some of it’s clearly not true, and that’s frustrating; but the core of it feels real, about growing up in a wrestling family in England. It’s an honest look at how families can make or break a person, and sometimes do both.
The movie is directed by Stephen Merchant, the tall, funny comedian best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais. Florence Pugh (“Lady Macbeth”) stars as Saraya Knight, later known as Paige, who grew up fighting with her family, literally. Her parents and her older brother were all wrestlers, and in the early scenes, we see them fighting each other for paying customers at small exhibitions.
The dream is to fight for the WWE — World Wrestling Entertainment. The WWE is a potential express train from the working class to instant wealth, with no stage in between. It’s the fairy godmother who materializes out of the air, or the Hollywood agent who spots the next movie star at the soda fountain. It’s the thing to hope for and work toward, but it’s also something that’s almost impossible, especially when you’re in Norwich, England. And then the seas part, and Paige gets a chance.
Though it’s set in the world of wrestling, “Fighting With My Family” can be understood by anyone who has ever wanted anything intensely, which is everybody. Paige gets sent to Florida to train with the WWE, knowing that only a handful of the young women will make the cut and go on to debut as a WWE wrestler. Even then, a career isn’t assured, because the ultimate decision is with the public. If they don’t respond, it’s back to wrestling with Mom and Dad in Norwich.
In Florida, Paige finds out that she doesn’t fit in. She’s not American. Unlike her colleagues, she’s not a former model. Paige struggles, though at times the movie’s depiction of her struggles is confusing. Despite being a wrestler, she doesn’t seem to have the strength or the stamina of the other women, which makes no sense. Yet these scenes work if you see them, not as literal, but as dramatizations of Paige’s internal struggle: When it really matters, it can be really hard to get out of your own way.
Paige has two problems in Florida, seemingly in contradiction, but both true: The first is that she is away from her family for the first time, and so she barely knows who she is. The second is that she is not far enough away from her family. She needs to get away from them completely and get them out of her thoughts, or else she’ll never be able to do anything. That’s the other meaning of the title — Paige is fighting with the family in her head.
Pugh is able to express that inner struggle, often with little dialogue, and this immediately makes her a strong sympathetic focus. The family is a lot of fun — Nick Frost, as the ex-con dad, and Lena Headey, as the mother, are essentially comic characters, but Merchant doesn’t render them innocuous. Parents like these could do things to your mind. And what would it be like to have an older brother (Jack Lowden) filled with resentment that you might achieve the dream, and he won’t?
The climax is fictionalized and seems to depend on the audience being as credulous as wrestling fans. (It takes an extra suspension of disbelief to forget that wrestling isn’t real.) You can go on YouTube and see Paige’s actual WrestleMania debut — it’s a lot different from what we see here. But hey, this isn’t a drama about World War II. A little license can be forgiven, especially in weird, warm movies like this one.