BJJ: Woman on Top (2023)

BJJ: Woman on Top (2023)

Starring: Angela Morena, Yuki Sakamoto, Jiad Arroyo, Jela Cuenca, Alexa Ocampo, Keanna Reeves
Director: Linnet Zurbano
Action Director: Rey Comia, Miguel Vasquez, Anna Mitra, Ivan Oleta

So, I was at a Brazilian online movie store when I came across this film, which I’d never heard of. When I saw the name and took at look at the poster/DVD cover, I was curious and went to the IMDB, whose plot suggested this was a spicy film about a woman who discovers a “second use” for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I watched the trailer on YouTube and it seemed like that was the case and decided to plunk down a few BRL (Brazilian Reais) and purchase it. If I had only known…

Elise Guererro (Angela Morena, of Butas and Sabel is still Young) is a pretty young lady attending Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (or BJJ from here on out) lessons. When it’s her turn to spar, the combination of her lying on the ground and facing a larger male opponent triggers her and she runs screaming from the dojo.

The film jumps to five months earlier and we find Elise at a college party where she is visibly uncomfortable with all the debauchery—mainly drinking—going on. She asks one of her friends to take her home, but said friend gives her, “Don’t be such a killjoy!” speech. When Elise heads up to the bathroom to freshen up a little, she accidentally walks in on Marco (Jiad Arroyo, of Pabuya and Us x Her) and Riza (Alexa Ocampo, of Bugaw and The Marianas Web) getting’ it on. Although Elise quickly makes her exit, the fact that Marco keeps on looking back to the door will carry some significance. Later on, Elise is given a roofie and some masked figure takes her up to an empty bedroom and tries to rape her. When a traumatized Elise returns to the thick of the party to report what happened, Riza slut-shames her (Marco carries a torch for Elise and Riza knows it) and has everybody pour beer all-over the poor girl.

Elise drops out of college and isolates herself for several months. One day, while exposing her feelings to her deceased father (i.e. talking to the sky and hoping he hears), Elise meets some strapping young man carrying a small birthday cake and balloons. That turns out to be Ace (Yuki Sakamoto, of Pabuya and Wanted: Girlfriend), a jiu-jitsu instructor who lost his fiancée, Diane, a few years earlier. He has a ritual of buying a cake on his deceased love’s birthday and buying balloons that he writes messages on and releases to the sky. He kindly invites Elise to write a message to her dad on one of the balloons and take part in his little ritual. He later gives her his card, which is enough for her to sign up for lessons.

Back to the present, Elise still is dealing with the trauma of her sexual assault even after a few months of training. Ace calls her into a special class where he opens up about how he was abused by his dad and how he learned BJJ in order to take back the narrative and strengthen himself. This is enough to get her to confess her own trauma and he helps her to start putting herself more into her training. A special bond develops between master and student, while Marco is still pining for Elise in the background (despite screwing Riza on a regular basis)…

So, I thought BJJ: Woman on Top was a film about a girl who learns jiu-jitsu to take back her sexuality and even incorporate it into the same. No, not really. This is basically a movie about a girl who has been traumatized, but who develops self-confidence and falls in love with her instructor. Almost like if Redbelt had focused Emily Mortimer’s character getting her confidence back and then pursuing Chiwetel Ejiofor’s ebony tonfa to show her thanks. For the most part, the sex (of which there is a lot) and the jiu-jitsu are treated as separate elements of the story, except for maybe the circumstances leading to Elise’s and Ace’s first love scene together.

The sex itself is what I’m going to assume is standard softcore fare (I am really not an expert on that genre). Lots of female nudity, but no actual full-frontal. Lots of faces in ecstasy and a wide variety of (otherwise standard) positions--including lots of simulated cunnilingus--all set to one love ballad or another. And it feels almost fitting that the first two letters of the title of this softcore romp reference a sexual act (that does show up briefly).

But as I said above, there isn’t actually any jiu-jitsu choreography incorporated into the sex itself, contrary to the IMDB synopsis. The only exception is the opening scene, in which two random people (Paul Pegasus and Honey Jade…now those are two porn names if I’ve ever seen any) are sparring in an overtly erotic manner. What this means is that BJJ: Woman on Top is just some average softcore drama with some jiu-jitsu window dressing, but no real exploration on how the different choke holds, arm bars, and leg locks could incite passion or serve as a enhancement of the same.

There is a bit of jiu-jitsu sparring thrown in here and there. The film ends with Elise discovering who her rapist is—it’s no surprise, given the small cast—and confronting him about it. I honestly don’t know who’s dumber, the man who keeps his “rape kit” under his bed, but close enough to the edge that any one of his girlfriends might see it; or the woman who confronts the man about it in his own house, instead of sneaking out with the evidence and immediately taking it to the police. The two end up going at it, jiu-jitsu style, but as you can expect, this is no Flash Point or Special ID. Rey Comia and Miguel Vasquez were responsible for the fight scenes, while I assume Anna Mitra and Ivan Oleta were responsible for training the actors behind the scenes.

If you want martial arts-tinged sex (like the erotic applications of the praying mantis style), BJJ: Woman on Top is probably not the film you’re looking for. If you want to see gorgeous Filipino girls in various states of undress, then that is another story. It’s not really my cup of tea and it was just some random one-off movie that I checked out because…I dunno…curiosity got the best of me, I guess.