Marty Supreme

Timothée Chalamet has been building toward something like this for years. Every role, every careful choice, every refusal to coast on his looks. Marty Supreme is the payoff. It is the performance that turns a movie star into an actor you cannot look away from, even when you want to.

Josh Safdie directs with the same anxious, suffocating energy he brought to Uncut Gems, but this is not a retread. Where Uncut Gems was a sprint through the Diamond District, Marty Supreme is a marathon through 1950s New York, following Marty Mauser, a nobody with the unshakable conviction that he was born to be somebody. His chosen arena just happens to be ping pong.

That might sound absurd. It is. Safdie knows it. Chalamet knows it. The genius of the film is that it makes you believe in Marty’s delusion anyway. You watch this sweaty, scheming, magnificently irritating man hustle his way through championships, hotel upgrades he cannot afford, and a catastrophically ill-advised affair with a fading movie star played by Gwyneth Paltrow, and somehow you root for him. Not because he deserves it. Because Chalamet makes you feel the hunger.

The supporting cast is stacked. Paltrow gives her most subtle work in years as Kay Stone, a woman who recognizes Marty’s desperation because she has her own. Odessa A’zion is a revelation as Rachel, the childhood friend who sees through every lie and loves him anyway. And Kevin O’Leary (yes, that Kevin O’Leary) is genuinely menacing as Kay’s husband Milton, delivering what might be the most unexpected great performance of the year.

Darius Khondji shoots the whole thing on 35mm, and every frame looks like a memory you are not sure you actually have. The needle drops are deliberately out of time (Tears for Fears in the 1950s) and it works, giving the film a disorienting quality that mirrors Marty’s own restless inability to exist in the present moment.

This is A24’s most expensive film ever, and you can feel every dollar on screen. But the scale never overwhelms the intimacy. Safdie keeps the camera inches from Chalamet’s face for long stretches, and those are the moments that stay with you. The ping pong scenes are electric, but the quiet moments are devastating.

Marty Supreme is now available on VOD after a theatrical run that made it A24’s highest grossing film worldwide. It has nine Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. If you have not seen it yet, this is the week.