BRIAN VINER: It’s a SMASH – Chalamet reigns supreme as a 1950s table tennis whizz… and irrepressible hustle
Marty Supreme
Vended: Plenty of top spin
There are echoes of the insanely fun and entertainingly campy Marty Supreme in Steven Spielberg’s great 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays the irrepressible 1960s hustler Frank Abagnale Jr.
This is high praise; Last month I listed the 25 best films of the 21st century in Weekend magazine, and I really should have made room for Catch Me If You Can. If I were to do this again, I might have to find room for Marty Supreme, too.
This film, set in 1952, is much more anarchic than Spielberg’s film, but just as interesting in every way; takes us on the wildest rides through several eventful months in the life of fast-talking Jewish New Yorker Marty Mauser (the wonderful Timothee Chalamet).
Skinny, bespectacled Marty, whose fizzing energy powers the story like a jet engine, sports a thin Ronald Colman mustache, presumably to appear older than he is, but a hint of acne gives the game away. Just like DiCaprio’s Frank Abagnale, he can weave in and out of almost any situation, despite not yet reaching adulthood.
At the beginning of the film, he works in his uncle’s shoe shop, his sales patter so adept that he says ‘I could sell shoes to an amputee’. But he is also a table tennis genius and is trying to market the orange ball that carries the title of ‘Marty Supreme’.
Marty has a lot of charisma but he is a real drifter, a con artist who will try any trick to get what he wants. What he desires more than success with his boldly colored ball is to be crowned the world’s greatest ping-pong player.
Throughout, there are some spectacular ping pong scenes that look like they were enhanced by CGI, but we’re told they aren’t. Chalamet reportedly practiced as hard with his paddle as he did with his plectrum as he prepared to portray a young Bob Dylan in the superb biopic A Complete Unknown.
But director and co-writer Josh Safdie’s film is more of a character study than a sports movie; is a study that follows not only the questionable character of Marty, but also the period when post-war New York City was brimming with opportunity for everyone in the production.
But soon Marty heads for harsher, greyer London with the aim of winning a big table tennis tournament at Wembley. He sweet-talks his way into staying at the Ritz, where he pursues faded movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow, excellent); with such arrogant confidence that she gives in, despite the huge age difference and the fact that she’s married to smug businessman Milton Rockwell (reality TV star Kevin O’Leary, sure to make his big screen debut). If anyone knows what makes Marty tick in this story, it’s Kay.
In New York, Marty has a girlfriend named Rachel (Odessa A’zion), but she is also married. His ethics and principles are meant to be hit back and forth depending on the circumstances, like a ping pong ball. And they get him into all sorts of extraordinary scrapes; one of which involves a gangster’s kidnapping dog, which takes us on another crazy tangent to the main narrative – which loosely involves Marty having to find his way to Japan to play in the World Table Tennis Championships and claim his crown.
It seems the only person who can help her get there is Milton, who just so happens to be the man she cuckolds. There’s a memorable scene in which Marty submits to humiliating corporal punishment as the price he must pay for a seat on Milton’s private plane to Tokyo.
While Safdie touches on dark themes like antisemitism and even the Holocaust, he has almost inappropriate fun with all of this; just as he and his brother Benny did in 2019’s Uncut Gems, another wild tale based on their father’s story of working in New York’s diamond district.
It takes some inspiration from real-life 1950s table tennis champion Marty Reisman, but Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein implement so many twists and turns into its story that you won’t believe which way it flies.
Servant
Decision: cheesy thriller
By contrast, The Housemaid is completely predictable. Indeed, if you’ve had your fill of Stiltons and biscuits the day after Christmas, you might not be ready for a thriller this cheesy and this crackly.
Like the 2024 movie It Ends With Us, which is similar in many ways, The Housemaid is adapted from a bestselling book, Freida McFadden’s novel of the same name. Suddenly appearing everywhere, Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, a young woman with a secret past she can’t reveal unless she lands a job with a wealthy family on Long Island, tending to their magnificent mansion and babysitting their unattractive teenage daughter.
Her new employers are the volatile and irascible Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) and her cranky millionaire husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), who manages Nina’s frequent mood swings with remarkable calm. Inevitably, Millie falls in love with him. Just as inevitably, all is not as it seems in the Winchester family.
Timothee Chalamet pictured in a scene from ‘Marty Supreme’
The director is Paul Feig, and his background in comedy (Bridesmaids, Spy) suggests we shouldn’t take any of this too seriously, least of all the bitchy Long Island wives and Andrew’s own creepy mother (Elizabeth Perkins), caricatures of a woman.
On that basis, The Housemaid is worth seeing for anyone who likes thrillers with high amounts of saturated fat.
All the films reviewed here are in theaters now.
