From the opening moments of Zoe McIntosh’s film, it is evident something is eating at Israel Adesanya. Stylebender begins not in the ring, but in a campervan in a field, with his psychotherapist, Janet Redmond. Conversations with Redmond, who describes herself on her website as “a sorceress manifesting love and creativity”, are staged through the film and she is effectively – with trainer Eugene Bareman and Adesanya himself – the film’s third main character.
There is more than one way to be a popular MMA champion. Kai Kara-France, also trained by Bareman, is a quiet, serious, family man who gets mobbed for autographs at Warriors games. Adesanya has been a whole other story. He’s the articulate, flamboyant immigrant kid who upended the Halberg Awards with a challenging speech in 2020.
In that speech – oddly absent from the film – he told the room, “When you see one of us rising, you want to tear him down because you feel inadequate and you want to call it humble.” His status as a right-on cause célèbre has gradually faded as the fighter has sometimes seemed more like an egregious public jerk (last week, he was convicted of drink driving). The film covers his most notorious utterance – his online threat to “rape” a UFC rival – and Bareman’s patient attempts to get his fighter to apologise to real rape victims.
Being an MMA fighter at Adesanya’s level requires not only natural ability and training, but also a degree of focus and physical control beyond the imagination of most of us. Stylebender suggests Adesanya’s driving force may be his own pain, or, as he tells Redmond halfway through the film, “emotional anger”.
There’s a striking scene in which Adesanya visits his alma mater, Rotorua Boys’ High School, where he was bullied, and the caretaker accidentally sets off the high-pitched burglar alarm. Adesanya convulses, almost bends double, at the sound. It’s the kind of hyper-vigilant response you see in trauma victims. It happens again later, in response to the scream of a young female fan.
Stylebender is not a corporate sports film. It’s a closely observed psychological portrait of a man whose makeup includes both an androgynous grace and beauty – in a lovely final scene, he dances alone in his hotel room – and angry, toxic masculinity. You find yourself hoping he’ll work it out in the end.
Rating out of 5: ★★★★
Stylebender directed by Zoe McIntosh is in cinemas now.
