When documentarian Julien Faraut finds an enormous trove of film footage taken of hotheaded tennis great John McEnroe at the French Open — footage shot for a series of innovative instructional films that examined the play of particular stars — he’s sure he’s got something. But what? An exploration of McEnroe as auteur, the masterful director and star of his own on-court dramas? (Just look at the canny way he breaks a game’s rhythm by argument, or listen to the aggressive way he repeats his questions to the ref — like De Niro in Raging Bull!) Or maybe an investigation of the man himself: a negative and angry man whose play is nonetheless elegant and efficient? (Even the editor of Cahiers du Cinema saw fit to judge his antics as a “theater of the absurd technique.”) Or perhaps a consideration of filmmaking and its effect on both our experience of reality and reality itself? (What happens when the camera follows the man and not the match? How does the whirring of a film camera shooting slo-mo affect the play of a high-strung perfectionist?) But in the end, he doesn’t have quite enough of anything for a feature. The film’s 94 minutes are heavily padded fore and aft, with the final 25 or so given to a tedious, unenlightening lookback at McEnroe’s 1984 showdown with Ivan Lendl in the finals. (2018) — Matthew Lickona
This movie is not currently in theaters.