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Written and directed by Julien Faraut and narrated by Mathieu Amalric, JOHN McENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION revisits the rich bounty of 16-mm-shot footage of the left-handed tennis star John McEnroe, at the time the world’s top-ranked player, as he competes in the French Open at Paris’s Roland Garros Stadium in 1984.
Close-ups and slow motion sequences of McEnroe competing, as well as instances of his notorious temper tantrums, highlight a ”man who played on the edge of his senses.”
Far from a traditional documentary, Faraut probes the archival film to unpack both McEnroe’s attention to the sport and the footage itself, creating a lively and immersive look at a driven athlete, a study on the sport of tennis and the human body and movement, and finally how these all intersect with cinema itself.
A sports documentary unlike any other. Looks at the game through the lense of film theory, recasting one of its most emotional and demanding athletes as something of an auteur.
- Indiewire
Quite simply the greatest tennis film ever made and one of the finest documentaries to honor any sport.
- MovieNation.com
Fascinating. Faraut strips down tennis; de Kermadec's footage strips down McEnroe's soul.
- EyeForFilm.co.uk
A benchmark cinematic experience. Even non-fans of sport will easily remain enraptured.
- IonCinema.com
An idiosyncratic meditation on tennis, cinema, human behaviour, maybe even life itself. One-of-a-kind.
- LA Times
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