MARTY SUPREME

Film critics often talk of films having three acts.

I'm sceptical that all films can be so neatly divided but in the case of this 1950s drama starring Timothée Chalamet the three acts are so clear as to be visible from space.

Act One introduces us to US table tennis player Marty Mauser (Chalamet), who goes to London where he finishes runner-up in the British Open.  

There he meets rich businessman Mr Rockwell and persuades him of the marketing opportunities in table tennis, given its popularity in Japan. Unfortunately when Mr Rockwell suggests that Marty take part in an exhibition match in Japan against the new British Open champion and local favourite, but only if Marty deliberately loses, Marty's pride prevents him from going along with it.

End of Act One.

Act Two begins with an amusing montage of Marty participating in some goofy exhibition matches in different cities around the world.  But then we are back to gritty New York, for an entertaining series of escapades in which Marty tries to raise enough money to get to Japan on his own steam so as to take part in the World Championships there.

A complication is that Marty has made his sometime girlfriend Rachel pregnant (we see the conception in a pre-credits sequence where they have sex in the back of a shoe shop), a messy situation given that she is married.

Marty fails to raise the money and has to humiliate himself by begging Mr Rockwell to revive the idea of the exhibition match so that Marty can get to Japan.

End of Act Two.

In Act Three Marty loses the exhibition match, as agreed, but then baulks at having to kiss a pig by way of further humiliation.  So he declares the match a sham and gets his opponent to play him for real.  Marty's reaction when he wins the 'proper' match shows how much it means to him, so no matter that Mr Rockwell is not at all happy and Marty is soon back in New York. 

The film then ends with Marty in tears at the sight of his new born son.

Gwyneth Paltrow is in the film as Mr Rockwell's wife, a world famous actress in her own right, who has a couple of brief sexual liaisons with Marty.  Although I enjoyed her presence it's not clear to me what her character adds to the film.

On the subject of irrelevancies the whole of Act Two could be cut out if Marty had simply agreed to the exhibition match at the outset.   And what happened to the money he must have earned from all those exhibition matches he played?

But without Act Two the film would be a lot shorter and we would lose most of Marty's character arc, assuming there is one.  

He's an embodiment of the American Dream: he has tremendous drive and self-belief backed up by talent, and he believes the sky's the limit. It's a tour de force performance by Chalamet, and his charisma carried me through what could have been an exhausting picture, even though his indifference to the chaos he causes repelled me at times. 

But I didn't feel that by the end he had changed in any fundamental way, and given that at no point does he display any real love for Rachel I didn't buy his emotional response to becoming a father.

Which is all to say that this is a very well made film which is fun to watch it but that it didn't ever reach any great heights or engage my emotions or make me want to watch it again.  It's directed by Josh Safdie, who with his brother directed 'Uncut Gems' which I enjoyed more, perhaps because there seemed more at stake in that film.

If Chalamet doesn't win an Oscar for this performance, excellent though it is, well I'm sure one day he will be honoured by the Academy, hopefully for a great performance in a great film.