The second part of this documentary portrait of the tennis star’s rise and fall does fill out the story but it sure takes its time
It is a pleasure, as well as a relief, to be able now to see the second part of Alex Gibney’s documentary about the disgraced German tennis legend who astonished the sports world by winning the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1985 at just 17, and has wound up in middle age going to prison in the UK for hiding assets after bankruptcy.
Very unfortunately and confusingly, the Berlin film festival showed just the first half of this Apple TV+ documentary (like showing half a movie) – an even more perplexing decision given that the festival showed Charles Ferguson’s Watergate documentary in its four-hour entirety in 2019 and all 252 minutes of Nanette Burstein’s Hillary Clinton documentary in 2020. And what’s more, the film’s distributor appeared not to ensure that this single episode was clearly billed as part one of a bigger production. It’s an object lesson in the dangers of putting a slice of streaming TV content into a film festival.