The Coach is another great tennis film that's actually about something else

If tennis is a metaphor for life, the one played in Andrea Di Stefano's The Coach tells a story a thousand miles away from the upper-class, glamorous, and winning sports world of Luca Guadagnino's Challengers and the current young, handsome Italian champions in the sport's world ranking. On the other hand, just like Guadagnino, Di Stefano is only interested in tennis as a sporting gesture up to a certain point: he prefers it as a starting point and framework for a story of fatherhood and disillusionment that has old-school Italian comedy as an essential reference.

Story of two losers

The protagonists of The Coach, in fact, live on the fringes of the professional tennis world, barely illuminated by the spotlight: young Felice (Tiziano Menichelli) because he has just earned the right to play around the Italian circuits, former champion Raoul (Pierfrancesco Favino) because, despite lacking motivation, he has found a way to scrape by in an now familiar environment, exploiting the illusions of people like the father of his protégé Pietro (Giovanni Ludeno). Felice is a local prodigy raised by his coach father whose passion for tennis is rivaled only by the idea of social redemption with which he trains his son. In the United States, such a premise yields King Richard, the biopic of the Williams sisters' father with a contrite and intense Will Smith who raises two champions. In Italy, however, it results in the story of two losers who spend a summer together exploring Italy one court at a time, discovering their mutual failure, one misstep at a time.

Tennis, therefore, can also be a metaphor for a national character and, just like in the most bittersweet Italian comedy, The Coach tells of Italianness with the typical sly melancholy of those who always manage, but here and there suffer from the lack of grand vision and purpose that this approach entails. A scoundrel and a womanizer, Raoul must live with the awareness of having had decent sporting potential that he did not fully exploit and coexist with a personal fragility that frightens him even more. Felice, on the other hand, is so young that when his father entrusts him to the care of the new coach to travel Italy and participate in junior tournaments, he has yet to discover the world, himself, and his fallibility.

Fatherhood and failures in the 80s

In fact, Di Stefano weaves a road movie that talks about sport and fatherhood, but above all about the gap between aspirations and achievements, which, contrary to what we expect, also concerns the very young. You are never too young to realize you are not living up to your own expectations, Di Stefano seems to suggest, in a comedy that here and there can be poignant, as well as full of regret. Raoul's, certainly, whose sly, flirtatious, and somewhat fraudulent approach is splendidly mixed with a fundamental melancholy well portrayed by a Favino who is truly perfect for the role, a bit Panatta-esque and a bit sorrowful. 

However, there is also a kind of nostalgic look back at a bygone golden age in the film: that of the 1980s. Despite a few passages that are a bit short on realism, The Coach is a surprising film for its description of an era it looks at with melancholy and regret, yes, but without ever romanticizing it. Di Stefano, in fact, tells of the Italian eighties that are the triumph of small-town ambition and results, perhaps only great in its naivety, which often marries a fundamental fatalism. The glamour and carefree spirit of the decade are in the air, but like a distant breeze of someone else's greatness that clashes with the good will and limitations of dilapidated courts, semi-amateur tournaments, and inhabitants of the Italian provinces from which, not by chance, Felice himself comes.

Everything about the boy speaks of the immense but poorly expressed love his father has for him, from the fanny pack to the transparent bag full of tokens to call home, to the notebooks with all the tactics and codes for communicating with the coach carefully transcribed. It is a patriarchal Italy, divided into classes and full of frustrations, told with an ironic touch and a certain tenderness by Di Stefano, in which the underlying inadequacy holds together the paternal figures who populate the film: affection is there but translates into overly intrusive presences and absences that are difficult to remedy. Di Stefano, however, ultimately roots for his struggling losers, without bending reality into an easy way out for their mistakes. The result is a film splendidly led by its three male protagonists (including the very young Tiziano Menichelli), enhanced by the amused cameo of Tiziano Menichelli. Direction and technical aspects are well-crafted and at the service of a story that almost always works, driven by intellect but not without heart.