ome movies are about grit and determination. About love, pain and confronting your worst, most colossal failures on a very public stage. Those movies are also about tennis. Because the best sports movies aren’t really about sport at all. They’re actually about the different forms of devotion (), or the bonds of sisterhood (), or fighting for self-respect (the brilliant), or the profound intimacy of someone knowing you better than you know yourself (). Sport is both the window-dressing and the window, a means of conveying everything from ambition to jealousy, disdain to lust. Or all of those things, as is the case in this month’s , starring Zendaya as Tashi, a tennis prodigy whose dreams are pierced by injury – and a messy love triangle. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (of fame), looks ravishingly sexy and tautly paced, and that’s even before Zendaya plays a single game. When they invented tennis, they never dreamed it could look this good.
