The Champion

Christian is nineteen and the most expensive footballer in Rome. He is good on the pitch and a disaster off it: nightclubs, fights, scandals online. The club president finds a solution and hires him a private tutor. Valerio is the opposite kind of man: quiet, orderly, a teacher of literature who has got nowhere in his own life. The two start working towards a school diploma. The film does not hide its shape, but it departs from it in one place: the teacher needs rescuing too, and the real transformation happens to him. Christian's talent is never in question; what is questioned is that everyone around a nineteen-year-old wants something from him. Leonardo D'Agostini directed, his first feature. Stefano Accorsi plays Valerio and Andrea Carpenzano plays Christian. The football is deliberately sparse; the film barely shows a match and refers to the career only through results. Who it is for: anyone who likes sports drama and master-and-pupil stories. Who it is not for: anyone looking for originality. The shape is familiar, the crisis in the second half comes from the expected place, and the women in the script are purely functional.