FilmBlather.com

"Enter the hero."

Ping Pong is not only the best thing I saw at the 2003 Philadelphia Film Festival, but perhaps the best sports movie I've ever seen. It's the sort of thing that teaches one not to select festival films based on "buzz", because it is the wonderful obscurities that you hate to let slip through your fingers. I went because I think table tennis is neat, and because I thought that the novelty of a movie about it would hold my attention. I did not expect it to engage me on every level for nearly two hours, and ultimately move me more deeply than anything else this year.

The focus is on two great young table tennis players, Peco (Y™suke Kubozuka) and Smile (Arata), the latter so named because he never does. The movie takes place mostly within one year of their lives, from one inter-school tournament to the next. Peco is arrogant, confident and animated; he dreams of becoming the best ping pong player in the world, but can't muster the willpower to come to his high school team's practice. Smile, that happy fellow, has more talent than Peco, but plays Ping Pong to "kill time" as he meanders through his teenage years. He lets Peco win regularly because he can't bear to see the other's disappointment if he loses.

Smile is egged on by a frustrated coach, who wants to vicariously live his injury-destroyed dream of becoming a table tennis star. Peco gives up for a while after suffering a couple of humiliating losses, but returns with a vengeance after finding a mentor in the proprietor of the local ping pong dojo (yes, a ping pong dojo). There are rival players, of course, including a Chinese dynamo helpfully monikered China, and a brooding champion named Dragon.

Most of the sports movie conventions are present here, but the film invariably puts a spin on them. The archenemies of the heroes aren't portrayed as bullies and buffoons, but as fierce competitors who are respectful of their opponents' talent and sometimes frustrated at their own lack thereof. The best friends at the center of the plot are real people, with real personalities and real crises that are, it just so happens, manifested through table tennis. And while the movie prepares us for a Big Match at the end of it all, the way it winds up handling it is unexpected and wonderful.

Ping Pong essentially does away with all extraneous elements and characters. We never meet Peco or Smile's family. No prospective love interest ever enters the frame. I'm not sure if there is a single scene that doesn't, in one way or another, refer back to the titular sport. What's left is a surprisingly subtle, cohesive allegory -- table tennis as life. The crux of it isn't delivered in a dramatic speech, either: director Fumihiko Sori actually presents some pretty serious philosophy over the course of the movie, and it all somehow comes together.

But lest I make this sound like anything overly heavy-duty, I should say that the movie is an absolute, 112 minute blast. The director does his part -- the visual style becomes increasingly surreal as the film proceeds, and the pacing is lightning-fast -- but Ping Ping sinks or swims on the shoulders of its two leading actors. Arata -- no last name given -- does a terrific job in his solemn, rewarding role, but it is Y™suke Kubozuka who owns the movie as the fiery Peco. It is difficult to make a cocky, moody, boasting character into a likable hero, and Kubozuka manages this effortlessly, and with a smile. It is a remarkable performance.

You aren't likely to see an American theatrical release of this Japanese smash hit, though I hear a DVD may be on the horizon. It feels strange, having my favorite film of the year (so far) being virtually unseen, but I am unapologetic. Ping Pong takes all of the requisite sports movie cliches, so often rehashed and abused by Hollywood directors, and turns them on their head, takes them in a brand new direction. Adjectives like "inspirational" and "uplifting," usually inanities employed only by junket quote whores, come to mind as sincere descriptives. Who would have thought that a chronicle of table tennis tournaments could compellingly ruminate on the meaning of life? What a wonderful movie.