“FINAL SET”

A Comeback

Amos Lassen

Writer/Director Quentin Reynaud’s “Final Set” places emphasis on the psychology of the athlete and their personal stakes. Thomas Edison (Alex Lutz) is a once-promising and prodigious talent who made a French Open Semi-final at just 19, but he never lived up to his full potential. Now at 37, he is married to Eve (Ana Girardot), and they have a young child. His tennis career seems to be over. He has a knee injury and struggles to get invitations to big tournaments while coaching children to make a living. Though he is well past his prime, his desire to go on continues. After missing his expected entry into the French Open, Thomas must work his way through the qualifying rounds to get into the main draw and prove that he still has the ability and his worth to play.

Thomas knows this tournament could be his last, yet he is determined to push. This persistence leaves his wife and their young child in its wake. She, having once being a tennis player herself has moved into sports management and raising a child. Thomas continues traveling the world to play in tournaments in which they lose time and money. There is an intense argument between the two at dinner and these frustrations are exchanged. Both parties are angry that they are not supporting each other.

Thomas also has everything to prove to his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas), a very stern and cold woman who is brutally honest about her son’s unfulfilled potential. She thinks she is partly to blame for sending him to a tennis academy at a young age where he taught to believe he was going to be a star and this resulted in her leaving her job and a then getting a divorce. She has lost faith in him and does not believe he has the mindset to be a champion. She can’t watch him play anymore. The conversations between Thomas and his mother show their relationship and the impact that his shortcomings have had on both their lives.

Thomas’ fortitude, strength, and desire to win is unmatched and the physical and mental hurdles he must clear is fascinating viewing. The tennis matches add a sense of realism. While much of the drama takes place off court, the final match between Thomas and a young protégé Damien Thosso is compelling viewing and full of tension.

We also see how hard it is to make it to an elite level and the levels of dedication and commitment that are necessary to maintain that level. We see Thomas’ regime as he strives to compete against his younger opponents and his last shot at success and is grueling.

This is an entertaining, well-acted film showing the effects elite sport can have on family relationships and long-term physical health problems. While its ending may seem abrupt, there are some really tender and emotionally charged sequences between Thomas and both his wife and mother, that help to give his matches a greater sense of purpose and meaning for his life moving forward.

“SURGE”

A Change of Behavior

Amos Lassen

Joseph (Ben Whishaw) is a British airport security officer who responds to his alienating environment by snapping and going on a crime spree. Director Aneil Karia, however, takes us away from the fantasy of white male grievance that it could have been.

Joseph’s snap is more of a crumbling as we see when Joseph has to pat down an older traveler who seems to recognize him. Joseph has never met him before, can’t remember him, or won’t acknowledge any past with him. The man complains that the metal-detector wand is burning his skin and tells Joseph to follow him in exactly 63 seconds before running, only for security to immediately subdue him. Even if the man doesn’t know Joseph, he suggests that they are comrades in psychosis, allowing Joseph to recognize some kind of aberration in himself, even though it might just be a product of his imagination.

Joseph’s reaction escalates by doing a favor for his co-worker, Lily (Jasmine Jobson), by fixing her television set. The job calls for a cheap cable, but when the ATM eats his bank card, he goes to the bank, but they won’t accept his bus pass as identification. He writes a note saying he has a gun, and the teller empties the register. The bank robbery, combined with that of the unanticipated sex he has with Lily begins a chain reaction of norm-shattering behavior.

Filmed with a handheld camera that remains close to Whishaw’s face is both nauseating and exhilarating as we see Joseph’s disorientation.  

Joseph revenges himself on objects and his spree is seen as inevitableand inevitably short-lived. Bythe end,  Joseph’s gun turns out to be a banana and the wounds he’s sustained to his face become joyful.

Whitshaw’s performance is incredible and burning. He provokes people into beating him up on the streets of London but by the end his whole experience is like being trapped in a broken-down subway car with a mental patient.

Joseph’s increasingly manic mood is so strange that it’s almost believable. The film continues with incident after incident, until it just stops giving us very little about Joseph except that he’s very unhappy.

Frantic, kinetic energy propels the film but it never seems entirely sure where it has been or where it is going.

“THE UNIVERSALITY OF IT ALL”

“We are all part of the same story…”

Amos Lassen

Shot in Paris, Berlin, London, New York, USA, Sarasota, Vancouver, San Jose, and Costa Rica, “The Universality of It All” is focuses human migration and inequality. The film is intimate and informative explaining the complexity of human migration through important data and information and shows that these affect the reality of two friends and their daily lives.

 Emad is a refugee from Yemen living in Vancouver who realizes the interconnectedness of all the major events of the 21st century. We are taken around the world, looking at different cases of migration from an economic and historical perspective and understanding the life, thoughts, and experiences of Emad. The juxtaposition between narratives allows us to see the similarities and correlations that are common to all migrations. 

We also look at climate change, colonialism, neoliberalism, globalization, identity politics, fertility rates, wealth gaps, trade wars, terrorism, and the media.

Interviewees include Catherine De Withol (Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research), Radha S. Hedge (Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University), Ives Charbit (Professor of Demography, University Paris Descartes), Carlos Sandoval (Columbia Journalism School) and Nicolas Boeglin (Professor of International Law at the Law Faculty, University of Costa Rica).

What we see is that“everything is connected”.