Toe to Toe is a new fiction film by Emily Abt that follows a stream of documentary films about hard subjects. Abt’s first film, Take It from Me, was a feature documentary about four women on welfare struggling to get by in the wake of the 1996 Personal Responsibility Act and its five-year cap on public assistance. Her second documentary, All of Us, centers on one doctor’s struggle to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS among black women.
Toe to Toe doesn’t let up in subject matter. It tackles race, class, sex, and broken families from the perspective of high school students in their senior year around Washington, DC. Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is a black girl from the rough neighborhood of Anacostia who has moved back after a brief stint in a private school where she learned to play lacrosse. She is determined to get into Princeton and is focused on her grades and athletic talent to get her there.
Tosha operates virtually independently in her pursuit against her family’s low expectations and daily taunting from a local gang of girls. At lacrosse try-outs, she meets Jesse (Louisa Krause), a white fellow transfer student with a propensity for wild behavior. Jesse seems to have it all – a nice, huge house with a maid, her own car, and carte blanche to do whatever she wants while her mother is away traveling. Nevertheless, Jesse’s behavior can quickly spiral downward in reaction to her mother’s abandonment. The two form an unlikely, but fast friendship – probably through their fierce competitiveness on the lacrosse field and their mutual drive to get what they want.
The two spar over Rashid (Raising Victor Vargas’s Silvestre Rasuk), a Muslim student and DJ who mixes Middle Eastern music with the Go Go sounds of DC. Mina (Hina Abdullah) takes to Jesse and comes to her aid when the friends have a falling out, though she may have ulterior motives. As the pressures of school, future, romance, and family mount, Tosha and Jesse act out within type and suffer the consequences. Though at times hard to watch, the story feels authentic and the performances are spot on. The film opened February 26th in New York City and will open March 12 in Los Angeles.
Limité Rating: 4/5
Director: Emily Abt
Writer: Emily Abt
Cast: Sonequa Martin, Louisa Krause, Silvestre Rasuk, Hina Abdullah, Ally Walker, Leslie Uggams
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: Not rated
Runtime: 104 min.
Release Date: Feb. 26, 2010 (limited)
