Free Kick came online with a successful run of festivals and awards behind it and, although I do not really need encouragement to watch a short film, I did look to such accolades in a way that made me more interested to see it. One could say that perhaps my disappointment was linked to self-realized expectations, but I don't think so since I think the film was all too able to disappoint without my help. The plot is maybe not familiar in terms of specifics, but in terms of overall "underdog" narrative, it will tick many boxes. Adela is an older woman who finds herself living a life she does not want, but with no other options after so long – without children she cooks for her demanding and unloving husband, with littler personal joy or fulfilment. At the bank one day she is randomly selected for a contest connected to a national football team, the prize being 300k and, for Adela, a chance at her own life; all she has to do is do a Nayim (score a goal from the halfway line of the pitch).
We know how this should go: the film will make us feel for the underdog character of Adela, show her to us in the early stages of being domineer; then we will have the plot device of the contest which (as the conclusion wisely reminds us – is not really what it is about), and then we will have the journey (seeing Adela discover life, get her spark back, and then of course we have that big finish that was signalled at the start to look forward to. All of this lies along genre lines and I was totally fine with that because I really do enjoy a good sporting-related underdog story. So it was disappointing to find how little spark Free Kick manages to have, and how basic its elements were in some ways. We got everything that we expected; Adela's misery at the start is clear, but her journey is too rudimentary in its steps and presentation, and while we see that she has joy and hope, I didn't really feel for her as much as I wanted (or really at all). The bigger issue was that by the end, I really felt no excitement or nerves regarding the central event – which is odd for me since I get a bit emotional at any "last-second- shots-slow-motion-tracked" conclusions to such films.
In the end Free Kick is a fairly standard example of a common genre, but one which does the basics with technical expertise, but yet somewhere along the way the real heart and sense of joy doesn't come out from it.
