Dir: Andrea Di Stefano | Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Tiziano Menichelli, Giovanni Ludeno, Dora Romano, Paolo Briguglia, Valentina Belle, Edwige Fenech, Roberto Zibetti, Fabrizio Careddu | Italy. 2025. 125′
With its peppy soundtrack and laid back vibe Il Maestro, set in Italy in the late 1980s, was hoping to follow the success of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, one of a recent spate of sport dramadys. But the script had other ideas.
Andrea Di Stefano is a seasoned director with thrillers like Last Night of Amore and The Informer under his belt. But his latest, a tragi-comedy, misfires on the writing, despite a clever idea. After wading through the first hour, the film will start to make sense largely due to glowing performances from Italian ‘man of the moment’ Pierfrancesco Favino and up-and-coming actor Tiziano Menichelli whose eyes convey a depth of emotion words could never express.
For a start, My Tennis Maestro is not really about tennis – or even sport – for that matter. It’s a coming-of-age buddy movie about hope, disillusionment and growing up, and follows Menichelli’s promising young player whose father (Ludeno), desperate for the boy to succeed on the championship circuit, hires a trainer to hothouse his 13-year-old prodigy. With his macho charm and dark sunglasses Pierfrancesco Favino turns up trumps as Raul Gatti, a bragging former champion, turned coach. From the start we’re convinced Raul will make a star of his earnest pupil Felice (Menichelli).
The two men will inspire pity and praise by the end of this, overlong, film. Whether it appeals or not really depends on your feelings about a tonally uneven, brash Italian comedy underpinned by bittersweet elements. Here the emphasis is not on winning – but losing, and that provides the feature’s tragic heart and gives Favino the chance to display his subtle acting talents in the final stretch.
The look is a winner. This sun-soaked road movie takes us up and down the Adriatic coast with all the fabulous seascapes you can imagine and a vibrant dolce-vita vibe into the bargain. It gradually emerges that Raul is not only below par tennis-wise, he’s still on lithium after a spell in a clinic, and totally unable to provide the professional support and rigour Felice desperately needs. The two of them fall apart in a way that is tragic and in no way amusing, even in a dark comedic way, Raul wrecking a hotel lobby. This tonal shift from raunchy comedy to tragedy feels bewildering, despite some ‘gung ho’ bravado moments from Raul, as the two make their escape from the mayhem.
At the same time, Felice is trying to handle his father’s expectations during fraught telephone conversations, and deal with adolescence and the isolation he feels in coping with Raul, a fully blown playboy who is clearly off the rails. And we feel for them both, particularly when Raul collapses in tears and then punctures Felice’s morale with a scathing put-down.
Raul’s efforts to pump up his ego by harking back to past triumphs on the circuit, and his skill as a ladies’ man, a habit that has not served him well in the past, further destabilise poor Felice whose focus is improving his game, not learning how to flirt with the various women Raul picks up on the way.
Eventually we will learn the source of Raul’s heartache and these scenes are touching and gracefully played against the backdrop of Pesaro’s turbulent coastline. The film’s take-way is clearly that life in the domain of competitive sport is as much about strength of character and perseverance as talent and ability. The script just needed some more consideration.
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