When tennis becomes a metaphor for life
The film 'Il Maestro', starring Pierfrancesco Favino, tells the story of a thirteen-year-old boy who plays tennis and the coach who follows him in the late 1980s. But it is not just a story of tournaments and rackets
He is 13 years old, his name is Felice, but he has the melancholic and tense look of someone who feels he must meet his father's expectations and knows he has a very narrow road ahead of him: more than expectations, in fact, they are suffocating demands, he must become a tennis champion. His father, a Sip engineer, has done what he could to give him the basics and so far Felice has responded: he is a 'shot-putter' who waits for others to make a mistake, rigour and discipline inhabit his days, supplanting light-heartedness, the poster of Ivan Lendl on the wall reminds him who he wants to be. And he wins. At least at regional level.
It's time, the engineer thinks, to take the leap and test himself on the national circuit: it's time to rely on a professional, someone who can offer Felice what he cannot give him. Raul Gatti, someone who reached the round of 16 finals in Rome and now offers himself as a teacher, seems the right person, the parent convinces himself, sacrificing the family's holidays to deal with the expense. Little does he know that discipline, rules and training are not in the former tennis player's DNA. The anxiety that fills Felice's eyes rises from the first moment, when he realises, between one tournament and another, that his master loves the good life, enjoying the sea, courting women. But he soon discovers that behind all this - and behind the pills the master swallows every night - lies a fragile man, not to say a loser.
Gradually the dynamic changes, the 13-year-old's anxiety eases and gives way to understanding. The boy keeps his father at bay in his evening phone calls, while his relationship with Raul grows, the game - the game of life - they play together, accomplices, indeed allies. Even in the attack (Gatti's favourite strategy) on the playing field. The story rests on the performances of Pierfrancesco Favino (Raul) and Tiziano Menichelli (Felice), against the backdrop of Italy in the late 1980s, competitive but not fierce, light-hearted and pleasure-loving. Directed by Andrea Di Stefano, written with Ludovica Rampoldi, with editing by Giogiò Franchini (the hand of the successful series Una squadra is recognisable), and just landed in theatres with Vision Distribution, the film falls in the golden moment of Italian tennis but goes beyond rackets and tournaments that become, once again, a metaphor for life.
The theme and the characters (Valentina Bellè is also excellent) lead the director to indulge in a few over-the-top choices (including a Jesus who rises from the cross and incites the good Gatti with a service) that we had not seen in the previous Una notte d'Amore, a successful noir. But it matters little, because soon we are rooting for the two protagonists, on and off the field, towards the only match point that really matters, that for a free life, in which to be themselves to the full.
