‘Golpe de reverse’, the fiction that can be seen on Movistar Plus+ for a few weeks, has been released at the right time, after the #SeAcabó that the players of the Spanish Women’s Soccer Team have carried as their banner. dozens of newspaper covers, newsletters and hours and hours of television. The kiss that Luis Rubiales, former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, planted on the player Jenni Hermoso during the celebration of the World Cup was a shock for the athletes who have ended up turning the institution upside down.
With this reality connects ‘Backhand Blow’, a highly current fiction that addresses power and sexual abuses in the sporting environment. Starring Aidan Turner and Ella Lily Hyland, the Amazon Studios series addresses the relationship between a young tennis player and her coach and begins in the past when Justine Pearce (Lily Haland) is playing the semifinal of her first Grand Slam, the French Open. , and a wrist injury led him to retire from the slopes forever. The narrative then jumps to the present. Justine leads a disorderly life, from party to party, and works as a physiotherapist at Longwood Academy, the sports center from which she rose to ephemeral stardom when she was only 16 years old.
His coach Glenn Lapthorn (Aidan Turner), on the other hand, put an ocean in between and went to Orlando to promote the career of an American tennis player who, this time, has just won his first grand slam. Glenn’s return to Longwood Academy, with a million-dollar contract, ends up destabilizing the former player, who denounces Glenn for abuse.
Structured in six episodes directed by Toby MacDonald and Eva Riley, the fiction created by Hania Elkington constantly jumps from the past to the present to develop a story that hides a good part of its strengths until the end of the narrative. Justine’s case contains similarities with dozens of cases throughout the planet and not only in the sports field. There is, for example, the attitude of the institutions themselves, which in many cases downplay the importance of the facts, either because they do not believe the victim, or because they protect themselves from the consequences, or because what they want is to protect their investment. Fiction even makes it clear that until recently, a coach sleeping with his 16-year-old athlete was not even a crime in the United Kingdom.
And faced with this reality, the distrust of family and friends also clashes. All of this contributes to the victim blaming themselves for what happened and seeing themselves totally alone and isolated, something that fiction, which plays to mislead the viewer in the first moments, accurately describes. The arrival of Luisa (Maria Almeida), a young player from Orlando, could open a new opportunity to unmask the coach.
script holes
With an average photograph – although they are secondary, the tennis matches are terribly recorded – ‘Backhand Blow’ succeeds in describing the vulnerability that a victim of abuse goes through and making it clear that a victim is a victim, whether his behavior is perfect or not, and when he draws the elitist and privileged scenario of a tennis academy, but his script approaches the ridiculous when he narrates the investigations to try to stop the coach – the way in which Justine accesses Luisa’s cell phone or the way in which the coach’s wife meets the 16-year-old girl is very sad.
‘Golpe de reverse’ also develops other themes throughout its six episodes: from the level of demand for a high-performance athlete to the void that opens when a star must forcibly leave his career, through the absence of father figure or sports rivalry. In short, with its problems, the fiction is visible and maintains interest throughout almost the entire narrative.
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