CINEMA – While we’re simply recovering from Djokovic’s fifth set in opposition to Tsitsipas in the Roland-Garros final, Quentin Reynaud is placing our nerves to the take a look at. In his movie “5th set”, at the cinema this Wednesday, June 16, the director tells the story of Thomas Edison, a tennis participant quickly in his forties who refuses to hold up the racket. And movies as the final scene a final sport (nearly) in actual time breathtaking.
A former tennis participant who has recognized the pains of competitors and accidents, Quentin Reynaud has entrusted Alex Lutz with the function of his fallen hero, a 37-year-old skilled tennis participant who juggles contracts to complete his finish of the month with out overdraft. youngsters in a tennis college run by his mom (Kristin Scott-Thomas), additionally husband and pop on the town. And whereas everybody round him thinks he ought to finish his profession, Thomas Edison refuses to surrender.
Little by little, he handed the eliminatory matches of Roland-Garros, ”occasions watched by actual amateurs, as a result of they gave rise to pugnacious exchanges, onerous most of the time and engaging as a result of they’re contested by gamers who’ve financially have to earn them ”, feedback the director in the manufacturing notes. Until qualifying for the first spherical of the event the place he faces Damien Thosso, new hope of French tennis with the insolent expertise of 20 years his junior.
The fifth set scene puzzle
On the 1h50 of the movie, the fifth set of this match occupies a very good twenty minutes of bluffing realism which transports the spectator from his purple chair to the clay court docket of Roland-Garros. And taking pictures this sequence, in the actual enclosure of the legendary Parisian stadium, was a technical puzzle for Quentin Reynaud and his workforce.
“We started shooting with the scene of the ultimate match, on court 14 I think, almost packed. It was the highlight of the film and we put it in a box in a crazy energy, quite incredible even ”, remembers Alex Lutz. The 42-year-old actor, who had by no means performed tennis, skilled for 4 months, at the price of 4 hours of sport per day to get into the posture of a professional and “learn to put on, with the maximum naturally, three balls in his pocket, or to make them bounce on the ground, or to initiate a probable service ”:“ Basically, my work on the court was very much about choreography. If you look closely, I have very few hitting balls in the film. ”
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So for this intense scene as for the others, Quentin Reynaud was in a position to rely on liners. The director scripted all the factors of this well-known fifth set to have the ability to shoot in actual time with seasoned gamers. “There was someone in the stadium shouting the sequences to the liners: ‘serve, on the backhand, return on the forehand, climb on the fly’, etc. That, during the 21 points of the game. Because of the inevitable failures, we had to turn these 21 points more than 7 times in a row ”, he explains.
The subsequent day, after having edited the sequences of the night time earlier than, the entire match was replayed, however this time with Alex Lutz to have the ability to seize his reactions. “I was there, in the field with my computer and with the authority of an army captain, I managed Alex who, to be in touch with what was in the club, could not do otherwise than obey my orders. … that I didn’t have time to justify ”, says the filmmaker. “At one point, in the slow-motion footage, we see that he is moaning. It’s not because he missed a ball, but because he has no recoil from what he is doing! ”
The “dark reality” of tennis
A “rock’n’roll” shoot concedes Quentin Reynaud, who wished to provide the viewer an expertise with “a film that is committed, radical, and all in all quite experimental”. A profitable wager in the eyes of its predominant actor: “Quentin makes the sequence of this match last for twenty minutes, which, on a film of one hour and fifty minutes, may seem very cheeky (…) This sequence is proof of the love he has for this tennis he has practiced so much. I find her wonderful ”.
In addition to this daring sequence which retains aficionados and neophytes alike in suspense, “5th Set” can be a plunge into the grim actuality of the every day life of skilled tennis gamers, removed from the prime of the rankings. “The world of tennis is not that of football, where the 400th player in the world still manages to touch millions”, confirms Quentin Reynaud. “You have to have phenomenal courage to persevere in this sport which is magnificent, but cruel: unless you are a star, you should expect to suffer hundreds of small humiliations. Every year, tennis loses licensees. It is this reality, so dark, behind the scenes that I wanted to describe. It is even the heart of my film. From that point of view, I didn’t invent anything. All the anecdotes are true ”, he assures us.
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