Marinette

Marinette has more going for it than lots of movies I review at this stage in my journey. There’s some budget here. The movie looks good and features good performances. It also chose an interesting person of which they made a biopic about. But as a biopic, I find Marinette slightly below average. I think the film lacks focus and doesn’t do enough justice to the character at its centre.

The film is a biopic of Marinette Pichon. Pichon is a celebrated French soccer player who holds several records in the sport, regardless of gender. The film follows her from a young child up through her retirement in 2006. Given this large span of time, many events in Marinette’s life only get one scene’s worth of coverage before we return to watching her be good at soccer.

A big problem I have with the film is it seems to lack a thematic hook. Scene after scene in Marinette’s early life would be set up as a potential conflict only for that conflict to be resolved or forgotten in the next one. Themes such as gender equality and sexuality crop up in the film, but not consistently enough to say anything about such matters.

One more central theme in Marinette’s life and the movie is abuse. First from her father and later from a romantic partner. While this element of her story is more present, the film still fails to say much about it. Marinette will experience abuse and then play soccer about it. Then she experiences some abuse and then plays some soccer. With the romantic partner abuse, Marinette is able to leave. Though this whole story is truncated to about three scenes. The girlfriend is nice and then on a dime, becomes abusive. But don’t worry, as soon as Marinette tells her teammates, they’re ready to get Marinette away from her and move the movie along yet again.

Because of the decades long timespan, the movie just doesn’t have enough time to properly develop much story let alone subplot for Marinette. It races from one moment to another, sometimes with years in between in which apparently, nothing interesting happened. And after years of nothing, a whole conflict will introduce and resolve itself just as quickly. This is how the movie plays out, over and over until it ends.

Additionally, this very rushed storytelling means that Marinette often seems like an observer in her own life. Things happen to Marinette, she rarely does things for herself. As a protagonist, Marinette is irritatingly passive. Based on the movie, it would seem like outside of playing soccer, she had no agency in her own career. Coaches just find her and tell her what she’s doing next or where she’s going. And the often silent Marinette just smiles and says thank you and goes back to either playing soccer or being subject to abuse.

Look, I want this biopic about a very accomplished lesbian sports star to be good. The film is certainly a celebration of Pichon’s accomplishments. But the film has the depth of a Wikipedia article. It doesn’t have a strong emotional centre nor does it give much characterization to its protagonist besides is gay and likes sports. It’s very formulaic as a biopic, very much to the detriment of the story onscreen.

Overall rating: 4.9/10

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