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JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION

Julien Faraut France, 2018
A diverting, slightly pretentious movie about tennis and its kinship with cinema. Champs, we are told, dictate play like auteurs directing scenes, and Mac’s tantrums show the link between acting up and acting a part.
May 26, 2019
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[The film] should be fascinating, but the end result is dry, repetitive and lifeless... In the Realm of Perfection is a dull, ponderous experience that lacks the energy and excitement that we associate with McEnroe himself.
May 26, 2019
[A] cherishably idiosyncratic essay-film... a philosophical rumination on tennis, cinema and life... The result is an unexpectedly haunting description of 1984’s rollercoaster French men’s-singles final.
May 24, 2019
[In the Realm of Perfection] is a tricksy and bold film, one which thankfully shifts away from the usual subject-endorsed, Wiki-powered hagiographies that seem to tumble down the chute on a near-weekly basis. The objectivity here feels exotic and often pleasurable, yet by the end, it’s hard to know exactly who or what Faraut’s prime interest is.
May 23, 2019
[In the Realm of Perfection] is a pleasingly eccentric watch, and one full of rare insights... It’s certainly not the prerogative of your average sports doc to choose a setback, rather than a famous victory, for its one detailed set piece.
May 23, 2019
[In the Realm of Perfection] doesn't go out of its way to try to connect. Like McEnroe or Mozart, it simply is... Faraut strips down tennis; De Kermadec's footsage strips down McEnroe's soul. What remains is intuition, movement, striving - sport, art and religion become one.
November 6, 2018
Faraut eschews hagiography and biopic conventions to create a visual essay on the famed tennis player that is part deconstruction and part psychoanalysis. It is at times a beguiling and compelling piece of cinema, but it’s not without its frustrations.
September 7, 2018
This movie is a complex portrait of the athlete as a young artist in what proved to be his dominant period.
September 6, 2018
Rising gently from Faraut’s film is the belief that a professional tennis match is more like a movie than it is like anything else...What lingers, when this movie is done, are not the regular rallies, during which we survey the whole court, but those moments when we focus on McEnroe alone.
August 31, 2018
Removing the context of a tennis match is inherently impossible. We aren’t meant to conceive of such a story in isolation. Athletic perfection, as we’re trained to understand it, is an exercise in comparison. Julien Faraut’s cinematic portrait John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection... does its best to deconstruct those teachings.
August 31, 2018
An idiosyncratic, metaphysical meditation on tennis, cinema, human behavior, maybe even life itself, “Perfection” at times risks being too pleased with itself for its own good, but its one-of-a-kind credentials are never in doubt.
August 30, 2018
48 Hills
You might have to be a tennis buff to fully appreciate this eccentric appreciation, but it compels a certain interest no matter how little you know about the sport.
August 28, 2018