Three women are training for the Olympics. The world in which they exist seems fractured, strange. One gets canceled and masturbates to anime porn, one trains with a fishmonger, one struggles with an injury. A machine is haunting all of them that spits out random, abstruse phrases on receipt paper: “diner of decompression,” “hadopelagic astronomy.” Everything is rendered with crisp, luscious cinematography. This is not the wet dream of the most insufferable guy in your screenwriting class — it is “Agon,” the first feature from the Italian filmmaker Giulio Bertelli.
The opening titles are set to footage of knee surgery. Alice (real-life Judo gold medalist Alice Bellandi) is pushing herself to win despite the procedure. Sharpshooter Alex (Sofija Zobina, “La Chimera”) has been outed as a wolf-poacher and is weathering the PR nightmare; fencer Giovanna (Yile Vianello, “Heavenly Body”) is training like her life depends on it — and it might. The film begins with concepts we understand, like training, surgery, and press interviews, then slowly gives way to increasingly surreal and pretentious concepts. Fine: the trio is training to compete at the Olympics in Ludoj, a city that, in fact, does not exist. Not fine: the aforementioned pompous phrase generator or the fact that these Olympic games take place on soundstages, entirely without crowds, for no discernible reason.
It’s one thing to make a few high-concept moves when you’re creating your first film, and you’ve got money to blow (Bertelli, who also produced the film, is the younger son of Prada billionaires Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli), but “Agon” almost delights in alienating its audience. Given the Olympics’ unifying cultural impact, this film is notable for its abject lack of positive emotion. The female leads are all compelling, particularly Bellandi and Vianello, but they’re not given much to do beyond mean-mugging and experiencing pain. Everyone in this movie takes their sport deadly seriously, even if it involves sweaty wrestling with members of the same sex or wearing a funky little mesh mask.
It’s difficult to wonder who “Agon” is for, beyond the director’s own ego. Bertelli has assembled a capable cast and crew and created a series of eye-popping visuals with music video cinematographer Mauro Chiarello, but to what end? There are no lessons for these characters to learn, nothing for the viewer to gain beyond basic aesthetic pleasure. “Agon” is ultimately as cold and strange as the black voids in which its fictional Olympic athletes compete. The last thing this bizarro display needs is product placement for the director’s own freeze-dried food company, and yet…
There are ideas, and then there are vibes — this film confuses the latter for the former. Unfortunately, a narrative feature cannot sustain itself on conceits alone, and “Agon” ultimately feels like little more than a concept reel, a sequence of polished, flavorless images made to introduce you to a speculative universe without immersing you in it. After all, it takes a certain level of vulnerability to really share an idea with the world, to build something worth interrogating. “Agon” isn’t interested in any of that — this film wants to look good and seem smart. Ultimately, it’s so tedious that it practically accomplishes neither. [D]
