the review of the film by Andrea Di Stefano with Pierfrancesco Favino

A decade is ending, what will remain of those eighties? Surely the gray telephones and the summer ice creams at the seaside, when we meet Felice, thirteen years of concentration that match him like the perfectly pressed white tennis suits. Despite being a teenager, he follows strict ruleswritten in a notebook with stubborn precision by his father, who expects him to become a champion, fueling hopes thanks to good successes in regional category tournaments. He is one of those parents who overwhelm their sporting children with expectations as they approach the border between child’s play and the seduction of professionalism, and of the economic turning point for the whole family. “This way you will repay everything we have done for you.” Provincial emulators of their father Agassi demolished in the splendid Open. As if there was a need to add pressure to a sport that seems invented by the masters of psychoanalysiswithout simulations and disclaimer. Just you, a network, and an opponent.

Taking inspiration from his tennis adventures as a boy, Andrea Di Stefano he abandons for once the genre, practiced with skill in the past, to be captured by the seduction of time. Like other authors of these years – it will be advancing age or Covid that has pushed us to look from the rearview mirror – takes hold of a personal but also very universal adventure. A story of growth that is impossible to separate from fateful years, especially when they coincide with adolescence, in which comedy helps to tell the relationship between teacher and studentwith a mentor who would inevitably have to impose his jurisdiction even off the pitch, becoming a second father, or at least setting a good example with some life lessons. After all, tennis lends itself to existential metaphors, you can attack without fear or linger at the baseline waiting for the opponent’s mistake, shoot hard without looking or studying the opponent and go at it with tactics. But what if the mentor is a scoundrel who lives by his wits, hanging on to a past with some victories and wasted talent?

This is what he tells us The mastercapable of the hilarious disenchantment of aperitifs at the seaside as kids, at the beginning of the season, but also of the frightened and never so existential reflections, with friends, during the last drinks at the end of summer. Pierfrancesco Favino confirm later The last night of Love, harmony with Di Stefano and try to give a personal flavor to a character who recalls the noble scoundrels that Italian comedy gave us. It is inevitable to think about those references, especially in the truly hilarious first part in which the key to comedy is prevalent and works at full capacity. Just think of the care taken in portraying a “character actor” like Felice’s father, a very good one Giovanni Ludeno.

He is the one who built the test tube sample like Pallettaro Maximowho is forbidden from taking any risks and imposes the patience of lobs from the baseline, waiting for other people’s mistakes. But here we arrive at the gates of that crucial summer, in which the family’s hard-earned holiday money is invested in a round of national tournaments under the guidance of Maestro Gatti. Round of 16 at the Foro Italico, a languid and deceitful grand slam pick-up, and therefore irresistible, immediately, thanks to the contempt for ridicule of an increasingly impeccable Favino. The surprise is the little boy, Tiziano Menichellicapable of making that bizarre relationship credible and increasingly tender.

An archetypal bond, the one between the two, in which the younger one is the more mature, however blocked by a natural fear of growing up and taking risks, whether on the pitch or with the girls, but in life in general. He doesn’t dare break the rules with that arrogance called freedom which Gatti considers to be the teacher of life, but which has left a huge void in a present marked by his pastwhich the two chase together with sporting results, as they venture further and further from home and closer to the most painful and sensitive area.

A space-time journey, therefore, in which tennis is not just a metaphor, it is told with credibility by those who notice having spent endless days on the court, but inevitably leave a bit of red dust between the laces of their white shoes, even when they stop playing. “Those May afternoons will never return,” as water polo player Nanni Moretti would say, while the laughter of the initial meeting of characters turns into touching moments in which the bond between the two solidifies. Remaining exposed, however, to unexpected turbulences due to a Master who appears increasingly poised on the precipice, in which Raul loses the mask of teardrop sunglasses and tan.

A summer that will never be forgotten, with two fragile and imperfect traveling companions, told with sincere transport by a solid script, but capable of leaving aside the written rules when it is worth going to the net, also exposing oneself to the risk of a passer-by.