Giulio Bertelli, the Italian film-maker and son of fashion designer Miuccia Prada, presents a fascinatingly experimental debut feature with Agon. This machine-tooled movie is intensely designed and controlled, offering a kind of Martian's-eye-view documentary about something that doesn't actually exist. The film maintains an ice-cold, detached atmosphere, almost devoid of conventional dramatic dialogue, with only subdued exchanges that the audience overhears rather than actively listens to. Through this approach, Agon accumulates its own unique desolate force.
The Military Roots of Olympic Sports
Bertelli's film intuitively explores the military origins of three Olympic disciplines: judo, fencing, and shooting. These sports were originally considered the accomplishments of soldiers in a preindustrial age, and the movie reveals how the lineaments and forms of violence persist within these activities today. The film draws inspiration from the grisly accidental death of Soviet fencer Vladimir Smirnov in 1982, adding a layer of historical gravity to its narrative.
Three Women, Three Ordeals
The story follows three female Italian athletes participating in a fictional competition called Ludoj 2024. Alice, portrayed by real-life Italian judo gold-medallist Alice Bellandi, competes in judo. Alex, played by Sofija Zobina, is a target-shooter, while Yile Yara Vianello takes on the role of fencer Gio. The film meticulously documents the technocratically exact ways in which these women's bodies are measured, enhanced, inspected, and stress-tested by a white-collar male scientific labour force. This process is periodically juxtaposed with scenes showing the manufacture of fencers' metal grille masks, creating a powerful visual metaphor for the mechanization of human athletes.
Personal Struggles and Systemic Failures
Each athlete faces significant personal challenges. Alice suffers from an excruciating knee injury, with the film showing the unbearable surgery she undergoes, compounded by weight-class anxieties. Alex, despite enjoying glamorous fashion magazine cover shoots and sponsorship deals, finds herself in deep trouble when a viral video surfaces. The footage shows her hunting wolves with her rifle—technically termed a "sports tool"—alongside a group of men who reportedly paid her 50,000 euros for this illicit thrill-ride.
Most grimly, Gio's fencing contest ends in a tragic and horrendous mishap for her Singaporean opponent. Rather than addressing their own safety procedures, the sports authorities appear inclined to simply blame Gio for the incident. These narratives highlight systemic failures within the sporting world, where individual athletes bear the brunt of institutional negligence.
The Unspeakable Ordeal of Athletic Discipline
Each athlete appears to be quietly enduring a kind of unspeakable ordeal, a self-denying discipline that has governed their entire youth. The film evokes comparisons to Leonardo Van Dijl's tennis movie Julie Keeps Quiet, which also features real-life players. When Alice's knee gives out for the second time, irreversibly ending her career, her scream of pain becomes particularly disturbing as it mixes rage with despair. This moment encapsulates the film's central theme: all that work, all that training, all that pain ultimately leading to nothing.
Agon presents a profoundly subversive view of the Olympic ideal, challenging the glorified narratives often associated with elite sports. The spare, sometimes harrowing drama is suffused with a chilly vérité detachedness that forces viewers to confront the dark side of athletic perfection. The film's minimalist approach amplifies its emotional impact, making the athletes' struggles feel both intimate and universally resonant.
Through its innovative storytelling and stark visual style, Agon offers a compelling critique of how modern sports can dehumanize athletes in pursuit of perfection. The film is scheduled for release on Mubi starting 24 April, providing audiences with an opportunity to engage with this thought-provoking exploration of sports, sacrifice, and systemic flaws.
