Hard, Fast and Beautiful!

Directed by Ida Lupino — one of the most disruptive voices in American cinema of the 1940s and 1950s — and starring Claire Trevor, Hard, Fast and Beautiful! follows Florence Farley, a young Californian tennis prodigy torn between the talent that takes her to national competition and the pressure from her ambitious mother, who sees in her daughter a chance to go up in society. With every victory on court, Florence seems to lose control of her own destiny. A biting portrait of the position of women in competitive sport, and the pressures they are subject to.