Leave it to the French to make the most existential sports film of all time. It's a pity that soccer (or, as it's known everywhere else in the universe, football) isn't particularly popular in the United States, because that means not a lot of people in America will get a chance to see Vikash Dhorasoo's Substitute, one of the most compelling -- and angst-ridden -- sports movies ever made. For a film that it would be a compliment to call 'amateurish' -- Dhorasoo was given a Super-8 camera only weeks before he started filming the movie, and some of its lighter moments come early in the film when he can't seem to quite get the hang of how it works -- it's an extremely fascinating one, probably one of the most interesting sports documentaries ever made. Thrown together as a sort of lark-cum-confessional by its director, it shows a keen insight into the competitive psychology, provides a depressing but sympathetic look at how dull and desperate life can be for professional athletes who aren't lucky enough to be in the upper eschelons -- and does this on basically no budget, putting the glory-whoring pretentions of ESPN and the like to shame.
Most Americans, if they remember the 2006 World Cup at all, remember it for France's spectacular meltdown: Zinedine Zidane, hero of France's previous Cup victory, became frustrated and enraged in the finals against Italy, headbutting a defender and contributing to his team's loss on penalties. But his frustration was nothing compared to that of his teammate Vikash Dhorasoo: raised in a working-class suburban tenement from which he escaped through willpower and his skill at soccer, he fought long and hard to become the best he could, and when he was selected as part of the French National Team, he dreamed of becoming the first player of South Asian descent to become a star in the world's biggest sporting event. It was for this reason that his friend, French filmmaker Fred Poulet, gifted him with a camera: to record his dream coming true. But it was not to be: Dhorasoo, not the best player on the team but still a footballer of great skill, was never given much of a chance to succeed on the team. When the team was doing well, he wasn't needed, and when they weren't they couldn't risk putting him in. His coach used him only as a substitute and wouldn't give him a reason why, and during the entire World Cup, he played only eight minutes in two matches. His teammates won't talk to him for fear of breaking the French team's notorious code of locker room silence; he can't use any official footage of the games because of copyright restrictions; he can't communicate with the German family that hosts him during the game; and, worst of all, as he laments, "I'm a footballer, and I'm not playing football."
Substitute has just opened in the UK, where, as in France, it's been met with both jeers (mostly from sports fans, who consider Dhorasoo a whiner and his talk of aesthetics and Cassavetes pretentious) and praise (mostly from critics, who compare its long, empty silences, deliberate use of negative imagery and highbrow amateur techniques, unironically, to Godard and Kiarostami). During a somewhat difficult interview with the Guardian's Stuart Jeffries -- whose French is about as poor as Dhorasoo's English -- the director discusses the aesthetic in the film, how he completely understands those who mock Substitute's almost cartoonish sense of ennui and despair, and why he defends the football crowds that boo him. Because of the demographics of soccer fans in America, it's not likely to get a US release (I saw it through the good graces of a friend in France), but hopefully an English-language DVD will be forthcoming; Substitute may not be an ideal film for sports fans, but it's one of the best sports films I've ever seen.
