paddling
by
Douglas Messerli
Ronald
Bronstein and Josh Safdie (screenplay), Josh Safdie (director) Marty Supreme
/ 2025
Both the character Marty Mauser (loosely based on the table tennis plater Marty Reisman and his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler) and the movie Marty Supreme might easily be described as intensely frenetic, irritating, violent, and utterly charming all at the same moment. This is most definitely not a film for those who like quiet, gentle narratives that push them into confident and pre-determined boundaries. Or, perhaps, this film is not even for those who like tense action movies with, nonetheless, predictable endings wherein the hero, having proved his worth, lives on.
A lot of things happen in Safdie’s busy
film, but I am not going to describe every twist and turn of events. And I’m
not sure anyone who hasn’t seen the film would be able to understand such a
description were I determined to recount it.
What is important to note is that Marty,
an American second-generation Jewish man, is almost doomed by birth. Coming of
age in the 1950s, his constantly “suffering” mother Rebecca (Fran Drescher) is
the major reason why his uncle, Marray Norkin (Larry “Ratso” Sloman), who owns
a shoe shop, is determined that Marty will become manager of the place; besides
Marty is good with the customers.
Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), with whom
Marty has occasional sex, is a childhood friend of Marty’s, now married to a
mean slob Ira (Emory Cohen), also determined to use Marty to find a way out of
her relationship, at one point pretending Ira has severely beaten her after
having discovered their affair.
Dion Galanis (Luke Manley), one of Marty’s
friends, a man who still lives with his parents, also would like to stop form trying
to involve him and his father in obtaining financial support, and argues for
him just to settle down, presumably like the dumb obedient son his has become.
But Marty, a truly excellent table tennis player (better known in these days as ping-pong) has a dream, first to defeat the current table tennis champion, Bela Kletzki (Géza Röhrig, playing a role loosely based on real-life player Alojzy Ehrlich), and later to defeat the new table tennis winner, Japanese champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, inspired by Hiroji Satoh).
Yet
what an epic adventure he dares to undertake, first winning most of his table
tennis matches in London—all except, of course, to Koto Endo, a loss which
forces him to find a way to attend the next World match in Japan—by seducing a
famous a former noted actress and socialite, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), and
entering into what he hopes will be a successful business deal with Kay’s wealthy
husband, Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) who is determined to sell his
expensive pens to the Japanese market.
If through all the events up to this
point, we perceive Marty as an opportunist, hustler, and womanizer, he is also
simply a man who, above all, is trying to live out his version of the American
Dream, only the closed-minded USA doesn’t yet see the sport of Ping-Pong as
even being a legitimate sport. And in that fact and the decade’s abandonment to
the status quo, Marty’s dream—as so very many other American dreams of the day—does
not correlate with US values. Marty might as well be trying to become the world’s
greatest dancer, actor, poet, someone trying to create a computer, or even an
openly gay man. There is no ready place for him in this society. This straight
dreamer is doomed by the world in which he lives.
And even more important, he is destined
to become a loser because he is determined, despite his worst tendencies, to
play it straight, to stand for the very ideals that most US citizens believe
are behind their actions.
Charges for a clean and silent hotel room
(and a few unnecessary splurges on the side to impress Kay) get him into
trouble with the International Table Tennis Association (represented by Ram
Sethi, performed by Pico Iyer), and is fined $1,500.
Rockwell is willing to support him, but
only if he first plays a series of pre-professional matches with Koto Endo in
Japan in which, to please the Japanese audiences to whom he hopes to sell his
pens.
Marty refuses, but severely pays the price
when even the money he has successfully raised for the trip is reclaimed by his
uncle who will otherwise have him arrested for robbery. Rachel shows up
pregnant, claiming the child is his. And quite by accident, Marty becomes
involved with a mobster Ezra Mishkin (played by film director Abel Ferrara) who,
while recuperating, entrusts his dog Moses, to his keeping, promising to pay
him for the dog’s care.
With Rachel’s and his taxi-driving friend
Wally’s (Tayler Okonma) interventions even worse things begin to happen, until
finally, again encountering the actress Kay Stone, he has no choice but to beg the
pen magnate Rockwell to let him play and lose the Japanese demonstration match.
The cost this time is not only a loss of
all principles but a total abasement, both sexual and societally, as Rockwell
demands that Marty, in front of his wealthy male friends, pull down his pants
to that he might ruthlessly paddle him with the very tool of Marty’s trade. The
red butt the camera watches in this voyeuristic affair, so Chalamet assures us,
is that of the actor himself, who
At least Marty is now in Japan! But even
then Marty reaches an impasse when the Table Tennis Association head, Ram
Sethi, tells him that he is not even registered to play in the contest, and no
exceptions will be made.
Despondent, but not yet ready to give up,
Marty is ready to reveal the lie of the demonstration match, demanding that
Koto Endo play a real match with him as opposed to the intended sham game. Advised
of the change of plans, Rockwell tells Marty that he will find no chance of
happiness in his life ahead, revealing, perhaps metaphorically, but what we fear
what may be actually the truth, that he is a vampire.
Even
he has to give some credit to the little loser who, despite all blocks put in
his way, wins the unofficial match. Marty actually wishes Endo well, hoping
that we will win the international tournament so that we can at least know within
that perhaps he really is the best table tennis player in the world.
With the help of US servicemen who have
watched the match, Marty returns to the US just in time for the birth of Rachel’s
baby, a child who he now recognizes as his own and like all model fathers
watches with love and even tears through the protection of the glass panel
behind which newborns are kept, the nurse holding up perhaps a child who may in
the future be able to break the boundaries society would attempt to contain his
or her life.
When I originally announced to my queer
blog audiences that I had seen this film, I reminded them that I do still watch
and review straight movies from time to time, and that this film most
definitely had no gay content.
But I think I was probably wrong. Safie
is known as a director open evidently to some improvisation. In an interview with
director Sean Baker on an A24 podcast, O’Leary revealed that the suggestion
that his character was a vampire was an ad-lib, which was so supported by the
director and his co-writer, that they planned for an ending in which an older
Marty would take his granddaughter to a 1980s concert, only to again meet up
with Rockwell who, being an actual vampire, would bite Marty in the neck.
Clearly, Rockwell’s interest in paddling
young men’s butts extended to an interest into a vampirish bite of love to keep
the boy near him throughout eternity. The studio heads, however, obviously
having never imagined the success of a movie like the same year’s Sinners (which
shifts genre from a black blues musical to a vampire blood bath), nixed the
changes. Besides, Rockwell is not the only loving villain of the piece; the entire society has also taken its bite.
Los
Angeles, February 1, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).
