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5.9/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.9/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Queen of Sports remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have a soft spot for moral tales that feel like they were carved out of a different century, you might dig Queen of Sports. It’s definitely not for the impatient, though. If you need your sports movies to be all high-stakes training montages and heart-pounding finishes, you’ll probably be bored to tears by the middle act. 🏃♀️
Lin Ying arrives in Shanghai with nothing but her legs and a dream. The college setting is filmed with this odd, stagey quality that makes every hallway interaction feel like a rehearsal. It’s not necessarily bad, just... stiff. There’s a scene where she’s practicing her start in a courtyard that goes on just a second too long, and you can practically hear the director shouting at the extras to keep their heads down.
Once she hits the big leagues, the movie shifts gears into a sort of cautionary fable about selling out. Watching her get wrapped up in the 'upper class' crowd is equal parts frustrating and fascinating. She swaps her humble athletic gear for dresses that look heavy enough to drag her down on the track. I’m pretty sure there’s a metaphor there, but it’s not exactly subtle, is it?
The pacing is all over the place. Sometimes it sprints, other times it just stands there staring at the scenery. It reminds me a bit of the slow, methodical drift in The Eternal Grind where the environment matters more than the actual dialogue. The Shanghai elite look like they’re having a great time, but everyone else looks like they’re waiting for the bus.
Specific observation: The way the light hits the track in the early scenes is genuinely beautiful. It feels tactile, like you could reach out and touch the dust. Then, once she starts hanging out with the fancy folks, the lighting shifts to these weirdly flat, over-lit interiors. It’s almost like the movie is punishing her for leaving the track.
I kept waiting for a big, explosive moment where she realizes she’s messed up, but it doesn't really come in the way you expect. It just sort of... fizzles out into a realization. It’s not the dramatic payoff you’d get in a modern flick, but it feels weirdly honest. Like, yeah, sometimes people just slowly fade away into their own bad decisions without a grand speech.
It’s not a masterpiece, but it doesn’t try to be. It just tells a story about a girl who got distracted by shiny things. We’ve all been there, right? Maybe not with international fame, but definitely with the 'losing the plot' part. 🎞️
IMDb 6.6
1922
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