She may have beaten Serena Williams, but Netflix’s affecting new docuseries reveals Osaka as a young woman plagued by self-doubt, and trying to figure out her place in the world
There is a problem that sometimes afflicts documentaries about sports personalities, in that the phrase can be an oxymoron. This is not intended to be an insult: sporting excellence on an international level requires such astonishing dedication that there is rarely time or space for much of a life outside it. Naomi Osaka (Netflix) solves this by turning the tennis player’s story into an exploration of both life on the court and the vast spaces around it. It is about loneliness and self-discovery as much as it is about tennis, and it is beautifully done.
Each of its three episodes covers a different phase in Osaka’s still-nascent career, and though it does not cover her recent withdrawal from the French Open and the subsequent discussion around mental health in sport, it provides substantial context for it. The first episode follows the aftermath of Osaka defeating her childhood hero Serena Williams at that famous US Open final in 2018, and becoming globally famous in an instant. Director Garrett Bradley has been given intimate access to Osaka’s world – home videos from her childhood, interviews with her parents and team – and what she does with them is curiously affecting. The series has a slow, almost meditative pace, and it imbues seemingly mundane events with poignancy. Osaka moves into a new house, but she cannot sleep, instead spending the night wide awake, on her phone. The question that plagues her is whether she is a good tennis player or not. She has given her whole life to the sport: what would it mean if she were not?