Out of Bounds: Powerful review
"Boxing is the ultimate challenge. There's nothing that can compare to testing yourself the way you do every time you step in the ring." - Sugar Ray Leonard
Many argue that boxing, among all sports, is the ultimate test of character of a sportsperson. Fulvio Bernasconi also seems to believe so. That is why Out of Bounds (Fuore Dalle Corde) directed by him uses boxing as a metaphor for the fight for survival in today's unforgiving, cruel world. Bernasconi, in this Switzerland-Italy co-production theatrically released in India by NDTV Lumiere, has his protagonist in a boxer for whom the world of fairplay is made to move far, far away. Caught in a bind, he has to fight for his survival, literally. Boxing here is almost a metaphor for life itself - life of a multitude whose skills go unrecognized, forcing them to adopt often questionable means for survival at great cost to their own lives, physically as well as mentally.
Here, 30ish Italian Michele "Mike" Lo Russo, who knows nothing except the sport of boxing as his means of livelihood, suddenly faces a crisis after losing a match in Hamburg, where he has moved to for a professional career. Even though he is declared as the loser in a match he has clearly won, his German manager decides that his contract cannot be renewed. Mike returns to Trieste and lives with his sister Anna, for whom the return of the brother, through whose expected successful boxing career she had dreamt an escape route to a better life, comes as a shock.
With no fights forthcoming, Mike slowly gets frustrated, more so as their financial problems grow. One day, finally, he takes up an offer, to go into underground boxing, which is illegal, tough, unforgiving and follows no rules. After he participates in his first underground match in Croatia, Mike gets sucked into that murky world, away from his own world and people. As he courts success after success in the underground arena, he becomes friends with another underground boxer, Ramirez, whose life is a twisted hell. Mike slowly becomes disgusted with the unrelenting viciousness of the path he has chosen to follow, and wants to quit underground fighting, but fate charts out a real test of character for him.
Michele Venitucchi, as Mike, had won the Silver Leopard for best actor at the 2007
Locarno Film Festival and the best cinematography award at the Brooklyn International Film Festival, apart from touring a host of other film festivals. Bernasconi developed the idea for the film while filming a documentary on homeless people living in two abandoned wagons in the middle of Geneva, and consequent to his realization of the violence that underlies the lives of these people, amidst a seemingly-serene, peaceful, opulent world.
Out of Bounds reflects these issues, and does so in a visceral and uncompromising manner. Its unrelenting portrayal of the harsh life thrust upon some sections of the mankind makes it a powerful reflection of the tough times we live in. As the film symbolizes, what on the face of it could be a peaceful world, does have a cruel face underneath the sheen, and only those who live that life can feel the sleight of destiny that slices through their lives like a cold metal blade slashes through dead meat.
