Born to Lift

Our first film of the festival was Benavides Born. This is a feature about a young woman power lifter in Benavides, Texas, who is trying to escape the dead-end town she had grown up in for a better life through a big-city college education. Power-lifting is a real avenue for this in that part of South Texas, and the girls who do it are serious about it. Predictably, enlistment in the military is the other.

There’s a few interesting characterizations:

* Ray, the boyfriend, has more depth than usual in a film like this.

* The coach is supportive, but has real, human reactions as the lead’s character changes.

* Various other supporting cast are not just window-dressing.

Some of the plot was a little obvious, but the ending was positive without being saccharine. As the writer put it during the Q&A after the screening, this is not the “Rocky” of power-lifting.

Recommend, about a 3.5 out of 5.