Faraut is less interested in how cinema affects tennis than how they overlap. He's searching for the line separating reality from performance, [proving] one doesn't exist.
The only tennis documentary to set Sonic Youth's cyberpunk ode The Sprawl to a technique montage, Julien Faraut's wonderfully original film mixes film theory, cryptic analysis, and multiple break(ing) points to form a coolly intoxicating examination.
...proving that sport itself can be fundamentally cinematic and ripe with psychological drama when documented in a manner outside of the traditional systems designed for live or television viewing.
"John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection" is a sports documentary unlike any other, a beguiling and delightful piece of visionary non-fiction that uses its namesake to investigate the ontological nature of watching tennis.
Regardless of his enemy, the main event was McEnroe vs. McEnroe, in an unresolvable tiebreak of body and soul. There had been nothing like it, on public view, since the heyday of James Dean.
There's a strange allure to the film, how it whimsically and playfully approaches one of the greatest tennis players to play the game from such unexpected angles.
