Director-actress Jia Ling lost some 50kg through a strict diet and training regime to play an amateur boxer in Yolo.On screen, an unconfident, people-pleasing and overweight woman takes up boxing and transforms not just her body, but her life along with it.For the sports drama Yolo, she put on 20kg to up her weight to around 100kg to play protagonist Du Leying at the beginning of the movie, which opens in Singapore cinemas on March 21.
Instead, she took on the challenge herself, but not without a lot of trepidation and going through several “stages of fear”. “I was very resistant and I worried that I’ll never be able to use food to comfort myself and make myself happy anymore. But after a whole year, my perspective has changed. I’m very at peace now with myself.”
In Yolo, Leying is an unemployed woman in her 30s who feels lost in life. She joins a boxing gym to get close to a coach she has a crush on. After a series of disappointments, she devotes herself to boxing in the hopes of winning just once.“It was the most difficult to get myself moving. I hated exercising in the past. I used to live on my couch when I was at home. And every time I exercised, I felt as if life owed me a debt and that I deserve a reward.
“There are other gym and training scenes in the movie where I mostly wore loose-fitting clothes to cover myself up because everything is in anticipation of one scene, which is meant to show the audience a protagonist who has been reborn.”
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