Pierfrancesco Favino seems condemned to absolute protagonism, to being a showman always and in any case and “Il Maestro” by Andrea Di Stefano is clear proof of this. Tennis, life, love, fear, guilt, tears and smiles are the heart of this strange comedy presented out of competition at Venice 82 and in cinemas from November 13th, a little sporty and a little not.

“The Master” – The plot

Tennis has suddenly become the great love of Italians at a national level. “Il Maestro” by Andrea Di Stefano certifies this great love by offering us a story set in the 80s, vaguely autobiographical, in which the racket becomes a metaphor for a journey halfway between a coming-of-age film and a generational metaphor.

The protagonist is Felice (Tiziano Menichelli), a promising young thirteen-year-old tennis player who his engineer father (Giovanni Ludeno) literally raised with the hope of making him the new Lendl or Panatta. Exhausting training sessions, numerical calculations and above all a dictatorial technical-tactical approach: you play from the back, from a throw-in, you just defend, attacking is forbidden, that’s for dad’s boys, for those who can even afford to lose a few matches. However, when Felice overcomes the hurdle of the regionals and arrives at the nationals, his father realizes that he needs a coach and chooses Raul Gatti (Pierfrancesco Favino).

He is a former broken tennis promise, a womanizer with a history of alcohol, failed relationships and suicidal tendencies. Oppressed by the need to always win in any case to satisfy that dictatorial and hypercompetitive parent, shy, especially towards girls, initially neglected by this coach who appears more interested in chasing skirts and sleeping, Felice soon develops a complex, tormented relationship with the teacher.

“The Maestro” is a comedy halfway between a road movie and a sports and training film. In the end, everything often rests on the shoulders of Pierfrancesco Favino, who is however surrounded by a supporting cast that includes Dora Romano, Valentina Bellé, Paolo Briguglia and also Edwige Fenech. Andrea Di Stefano, however, tends to take away space and depth from the characters, as if he were afraid of affecting the development of the relationship between the two protagonists. The result is an uneven film, a little too long but certainly with a lot of heart and more than a few qualities that go beyond the packaging.

A strange couple who chases happiness more than tennis

“The Master” talks to us about the past and the future. Felice and Andrea are two faces of the same person, of the same possible path, and the paradox is that the boy often appears to us to be more adult than this fifty-year-old bullock, incredibly fragile behind the vanity of a viveur, haunted by bad choices and mistakes that have completely ruined his existence.

The chemistry between the two protagonists is almost perfect, the coldness of the first and the childish exuberance of the second, the problem however is that “The Maestro” stretches the story too much, at a certain point tennis really puts it aside too much, despite giving us a rather realistic and ruthless image of what is the life of baby phenomena or supposed such. Pierfrancesco Favino is touching, funny, he creates a character that is a mix between the different sides of that tennis stardom, which in the 70s and 80s in particular, produced characters who were nothing short of legendary but often conditioned in the second part of their existence by excesses, errors and accumulated feelings of guilt.

The problem is that sometimes the film gets lost along the way, it forgets its little protagonist, it makes the center exclusively Gatti, with an interlude on the lost fatherhood that is rather avoidable, with an imbalance in alternating melancholy and joy, which is not always balanced in the right way.

However, it is certainly a popular film, made for the general public and which the general public will appreciate, especially in this phase where thanks to Sinner and Paolini, the racket seems to have become an opportunity for metaphorical redemption of a country which, as always, our cinema, as in this case, describes us in a slightly too absolute way.

However, it is a film that distances itself from the typically bourgeois dimension, it knows how to tell us about a single individual, who has nothing else apart from the racket, forced to live in his past, for better or worse. However, it is not enough to make that leap in quality that slips away at the best moment, like a service that is too insidious.

Rating: 6