“Rapinoe,” Rebeca Huntt’s revealing portrait of the athlete and activist Megan Rapinoe, is not like other celebrity documentaries. Where other such films can feel as if they are being swallowed up by the fame of their subjects, finding only shallow insights outside of what we already know from the carefully curated image they put forth, this one dives headfirst into the tension and the complexity of its subject.
In her probing and sometimes poetic documentary, Huntt finds something meaty in the way Rapinoe has navigated the trappings of being not just known on a global stage but heavily scrutinized while on it. The film is about what Rapinoe refers to as her needing to “disassociate” in order to perform as one of the best soccer players in the world and also deal with the immense pressure that comes with that.
This revealing phrase, which she shares with a refreshing frankness, is the first of many moment in which “Rapinoe” cuts deeper into the person who became an iconic athlete. Yes, it captures the highs of Rapinoe’s victories in a way that leaves you feeling as if you could run through a brick wall when she does her iconic goal celebration pose during a dominant World Cup run, but it also slows down to compassionately reveal the physical and mental costs of that.
The opening documentary of the Toronto International Film Festival, the film traces Rapinoe’s life from childhood to soccer stardom to now stepping away from the sport. It’s somewhat standard in structure, but Huntt delicately teases out more complicated familial truths and struggles she Rapinoe carrys with her.
The film really starts to find its footing when it shifts focus to her time in with the Seattle Reign FC from 2013 to 2023. Rapinoe openly says she was initially disappointed to be playing in that city, yet it ultimately shaped her just as she shaped it. Through all of this, Huntt never loses sight of the personal as she explores Rapinoe’s increasingly vocal comments about the political state in the U.S.
Though she occasionally relies on the usual talking-head interviews and archival footage, Huntt also brings a more distinct formal approach. She shoots much of the documentary on film, lending it a more immediate and visually engaging texture, while also using water as a recurring motif. Whether you consider it a way of expressing a sort of “flow state” Rapinoe found herself in when playing or just a more poetic flourish that breaks up the film’s more conventional elements, it’s a choice that instills the film with a greater visual and emotional depth.
Though “Rapinoe” is not as personal and intimate as Huntt’s prior feature, 2021’s “Beba,” the director makes the most of her access to Rapinoe (of which there is a lot). Though there is always a question with documentaries like this of how much independence has been sacrificed to gain access, you never get a sense here that something is being left on the cutting room floor because they were inconvenient to the subject.
Instead, the film feels aware of its own limitations, pondering how we frequently see only what a noteworthy figure wants us to see, and how a star can find their way back to who they are outside the bubble of fame. It features Rapinoe speaking candidly about the challenges she’s had and, in one more fascinatingly vulnerable moment near the end, turning the camera on herself.
What initially is a fun scene of her showing off fashion becomes about her armor starting to crack before our eyes. While texting her then-fiancé and fellow Seattle athlete Sue Bird, we see a more emotional Rapinoe letting her guard down when alone with just herself and a camera. It’s the moment where all of what Huntt was getting at about her subject come into focus: The Rapinoe we saw on the global stage, poised and powerful because she had to be, is also a person with her own fears, anxieties, and emotions. Those things can take a toll on her, the people she cares about and the life she wants to live, a realization that Huntt lets linger in the air.
The film (thankfully) doesn’t indulge in salacious or speculative gossip about Rapinoe’s recent split with Bird, which rocked both the Seattle sports and queer community to its foundations earlier this year. Rather, it provides a potential answer to why so much in her life is changing, offering a more restrained though no less revealing look at how Rapinoe is navigating her personal life post-soccer.
Measured but also honest, “Rapinoe” brings emotions to the surface that its subject has been sublimating to survive. Even as there is still much we don’t see of Rapinoe, Huntt’s compassionate yet piercing eye gives us a fuller look at who she is than ever before.
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