Marty Supreme (15)

Marty Mauser sells shoes in 1952 New York in a Lower East Side store run by his uncle Murray - one of the many doubters of Marty's ambition to become a table tennis champion and represent his country with a ping pong paddle. Even his hypochondriac mother dismisses his dream. When an advance of his wages fails to materialise, Marty "appropriates" money from the shop's safe at gunpoint to buy a plane ticket to London to compete in a tournament that could change everything for him.

LondonNet Film Review

Marty Supreme (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Timothee Chalamet wields a ping pong bat with verve and strokes his way into Oscar contention in a life-affirming drama loosely inspired by the life of New York Jewish table tennis prodigy Marty Reisman. Co-written by director Josh Safdie and longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein, Marty Supreme globe-trots in the company of a fast-talking dreamer with unshakeable self-belief, who opens the film by impregnating his married lover to a euphoric burst of German synth-pop band Alphaville’s 1984 anthem, Forever Young…

“Let us die young or let us live forever,” sings lead vocalist Marian Gold at the start of the second verse. That’s a mantra which Marty Mauser (Chalamet) can support. He sells shoes in 1952 New York in a Lower East Side store run by his uncle Murray (Larry “Ratso” Sloman) – one of the many doubters of Marty’s ambition to become a table tennis champion and represent his country with a ping pong paddle. Even his hypochondriac mother (Fran Drescher) dismisses his dream. “I could sell shoes to an amputee,” crudely boasts Marty, who intends to fly to London to compete in a tournament after he has engaged in enthusiastic sex with married sweetheart Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion) in the stockroom. When an advance of his wages fails to materialise, Marty “appropriates” money from the shop’s safe at gunpoint to buy a plane ticket.

He certainly makes an impact in London, promising gobsmacked reporters that he will demolish reigning Hungarian champion Bela Kletzki (Geza Rohrig). “I’m going do to Kletzski what Auschwitz couldn’t,” he quips, and adds that he is Jewish so his outburst is acceptable. Still in London, Marty becomes romantically entangled with retired actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is the wife of a pen company tycoon (Kevin O’Leary) that the cocksure wunderkind hopes will sponsor him to fly to Japan and seek revenge against their national sporting hero, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi).

Marty Supreme unfolds with less urgency than any of the title character’s ping pong matches and the 150-minute running time is more of a slog than it needs to be but director and co-writer Safie retains a firm grip on his material, eliciting robust supporting performances from A’zion and Paltrow. Chalamet has delivered some extraordinary portrayals in a relatively short period of time including a lovesick teenager in Call Me By Your Name, a struggling drug addict in Beautiful Boy and last year’s bravura embodiment of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

He scales new heights for Safdie, tightly coiled with nervous energy as his grifter doggedly proves naysayers wrong at a time when table tennis had no discernible profile in the United States. He’s a smash, even when the picture fitfully misdirects a verbal volley into the net.

– Sarah Lee