Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Tennis matches and documentaries thrive on the same thing: tension. That ingredient is almost entirely missing from the slick but unrevealing Federer: Twelve Final Days. We know from the start that the 20-time Grand Slam champion will play his last professional match at the 2022 Laver Cup, that it will involve a dream doubles pairing with Rafael Nadal, that they will lose, but a massive outpouring of love will follow. Above all, we know: there will be blub.Roger Federer has always worn his heart on his sleeve as proudly as a sponsor\u2019s logo, and there is no shying away from that in this effusively lachrymose lap of honour. If you\u2019re a fan, pack a hanky or three. If you\u2019re not, pack one anyway for the scenes involving his children. At one point you will see our hero breaking down crying while watching footage of himself breaking down crying.Federer has also always been a controversy-free zone, a model of Swiss neutrality, naturally averse to misbehaviour and careful to tiptoe around politics. Don\u2019t come expecting the indiscretions of last year\u2019s Boom!\u00a0Boom! The World Vs Boris\u00a0Becker. The worst you\u2019ll get here is a bit of swearing and an acknowledgment that: \u201cI didn\u2019t give Novak [Djokovic] the respect he deserved.\u201dWhat Federer ushered in was a new age of niceness. Even arch-nemesis Nadal became his bosom buddy. That adorable, giggly bromance is front and centre here. We see Federer anticipating the Spaniard\u2019s arrival like a nervous groom on the eve of his wedding (Djokovic playing best man by pointing out he is wearing the wrong shirt) and mentioning his wife and Nadal in the same breath: \u201cI knew there were two things that would trigger me: Mirka and Rafa.\u201dFederer\u2019s only enemy is injury \u2014 a troublesome knee that finally halted this most graceful of movers \u2014 and directors Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia don\u2019t skimp on the pathos. It was Sabia who shot the new footage, but you suspect the hand of Kapadia (Senna, Diego Maradona) in felicitous flourishes such as intercutting between the 40-year-old Federer lying prone on a physio\u2019s table and old clips of him collapsed on court after a tournament victory.Best of all for tennis obsessives are moments that catch the players unguarded in the locker room: discussing who on the tour has the most irritating grunt or dropping the facade of diplomacy to react tetchily to the sting of a loss. But overall while the professional career may be over, the brand must be protected.Twelve Final Days is big on PR but low on actual tennis. Talking heads hymn the beauty of Federer\u2019s silky, seemingly effortless technique but analysis of what made it so is fleeting. In the absence of drama, the filmmakers could have opted for more poetry in the style of Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait\u00a0or John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection. The irascible American, who here calls Federer \u201cBaryshnikov on a tennis court\u201d, wouldn\u2019t deny that the Swiss star is the real king of that realm. If any sportsman ever deserved a deep-dive cinematic study of athletic genius, it is surely Roger Federer.\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2606In UK cinemas now and on Amazon Prime Video from June 20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Tennis matches and documentaries thrive on the same thing: tension. That ingredient is almost entirely missing from the slick but unrevealing Federer: Twelve Final Days. We know<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-132901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132902,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132901\/revisions\/132902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}