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Tigers

This film by Swedish writer/director, Ronnie Sandahl is based on the book In the Shadow of San Siro, Martin Bengtsson's autobiography. Bengtsson was a footballing prodigy in the early 2000s and this is the story of how he tried to deal with going to a professional club at an early age. The club in question is Inter Milan, but it could probably have been any big club in Europe. A disclaimer of sorts in the end credits says how these clubs are improving their handling of mental health issues, and I guess we take their word for it.

The film is neatly blocked into seasons, starting with his impending arrival in Italy in spring and finishing in winter. Along the way, he encounters hardships; such as envy, bullying (though not as much as I'd expected), alienation and loneliness. He also seems to be getting some things right: friendship with an American keeper in his team, and crucially, a love interest in the form of a Swedish model, Vibeke (a fantastic Frida Gustavsson). Bengtsson himself is played by Erik Enge, and though he nails the distress, it's pretty hard to warm to him.

The animals in captivity theme is rife throughout - Martin freaks out some party-goers by replicating a pig squeal he heard from another player back in Sweden; there are finches, seen on a wire when Martin is kicking seven shades out of a skip bin AND in the cage at the young footballers' share house; and of course, the tiger of the title. This relates to a story told to him by Vibeke where a tiger bided years of his time in a zoo until his trainer dropped his guard once and, well, chewy, chewy.

Martin drives himself to the limit, and his burning ambition, coupled with a lack of adult support, are potential reasons for his mental decline. There aren't enough football scenes for my money, but there is one nicely delivered scene of how lost he was on his first team debut. Whiplash is a touchstone, especially in his, frankly hard to understand decision to ditch his girlfriend to concentrate on football. Methinks this is a dramatic flourish, it's not like the lad was being tempted at Maradona levels.

Overall, Tigers is a well structured, biographical docu-drama cataloguing of the life of a small fish with a big future in a big pond. It also acts as a cautionary tale for young footballers (or any young people, really) who exchange home life for a vastly different one, when they clearly aren't ready. I guess for every Messi, there are more Bengtssons.

See also:

Damien Chazelle's Whiplash (2014) for character similarities, and Gabriela Cowperthwaite's Blackfish (2013) for thematic ones.

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