Marty Supreme: Timothée Chalamet breathtaking in a huge acting film (review)

Josh Safdie paints the portrait of a chattering table tennis player in a euphoric fifties epic, between praise of chat and reflection on the fantasy of eternal youth.

A year ago, in A Perfect Stranger, Timothée Chalamet played the role of an eccentric young guy who arrives in New York to see how far his dreams of glory can take him. Youth, the Big Apple, ambition: there are quite a few parallels to be drawn between the Bob Dylan biopic and this Marty Supreme that Josh Safdie (one half of the Safdie brothers now operating solo) custom-made for Chalamet. The action takes place this time in 1952, but it is again about a gifted guy, Marty Mauser, ready to eat life to the fullest. His weapon is no longer a guitar, but a ping-pong racket.

Marty thinks big, he has an inordinate ego and an insane chatter, he wants to triumph, seduce women, make table tennis popular (then considered a slightly deviant hobby), even if it means repainting ping-pong balls around the world orange.

Deep down, he thinks he is “forever young”, “young forever”, as the Alphaville song plastered on the intro credits says, as also said, well, well, a homonymous piece by Bob Dylan, and as Timothée Chalamet himself seems to be, an actor who has decided to play, on the screen as well as on the red carpets, of the fascination caused by his youthful energy and his brash immaturity.

Marty is his ultimate mirror role, the occasion for a breathtaking performance, where the actor breathes his feverish tempo into the entire film, in the tradition of the great youthful interpretations of Dustin Hoffman or Pacino.

A huge actor’s film, Marty Supreme is also eminently safdiesque, its director redeploying his Cassavetes-style art of chaos and existential odysseys carried out step by step (in the style of Good Time and Uncut Gems), streaked with dissonant touches, like this choice to use 80s hits and sounds as the soundtrack for a grand-style 50s reconstruction, orchestrated by the legendary production designer Jack Fisk (collaborator of Malick, Lynch and PTA).

Also dissonant is the way in which this fable about the obsession with winning and the spotlight is limited by darkness. Darius Khondji’s photo surrounds in shadows the different worlds that Marty crosses: the New York Jewish community of the Lower East Side which is rebuilding itself in the traumatic stupor of the post-Second World War, smoky back rooms giving amateur table tennis clubs the air of secret societies, vampiric oligarchy led by businessmen whose sons have not returned from the fighting…

How to survive in this shattered universe? By telling stories. Everyone lies, scams, fabricates, in this round of smooth talkers, gamblers, actresses on the comeback (Gwyneth Paltrow as a faded diva), mothers who pretend to be unwell to call their son to their bedside, scripted sports competitions…

The film itself operates on a principle of seductive showiness, alternating sequences of crazy suspense relating to a pure sports film (Will Marty win the match?) and the zesty, constantly inventive adventures, carried by a fanciful casting which combines the musician Tyler the Creator, the filmmaker Abel Ferrara and the nanny from hell Fran Drescher.

At the end, at the end of his coming-of-age novel, Marty will understand that he must stop acting. We can quibble about the somewhat forced nature of the film’s resolution. But the preceding 2.5 hours are irresistibly seductive. And the pleasure they provide is truly supreme.

By Josh Safdie. With Timothée Chalamet, Odessa A’Zion, Gwyneth Paltrow… Duration: 2h29. Released February 18, 2026