-Written by Kyle Bain.
2020 was a year full of great challenges to be overcome–and the world of sports saw those challenges just like the rest of us. Just months before the start of the US Open tennis tournament, the world shut down; now Kristie Ahn and her contemporaries sit down with Writer-Director Jacqueline Joseph to discuss their hardships and how the world of sports came together in a time of struggle.
The more the comparisons are made, the more frustrated I become with them. I can’t remember the last time I saw a documentary focused on Covid that didn’t incorporate into it the death of George Floyd. I’m not here to talk about Floyd or debate on the politics of it–that’s not at all what I’m attempting to accomplish. The fact of the matter is that these documentaries are attempting to equate two distinctly different events (or at least make their presence someone synonymous with one another)–and that just shouldn’t happen. Love, 2020 does just this, attempt to compare the two, attempt to say that the two are somehow related. Other than the fact that they occurred at the same time, they aren’t really connected. Love, 2020 takes a hit when it does this, and it took some time while watching the film to bounce back from what I consider an atrocity.
I have issues with the text that appears on screen, as it often conflicts with the background. There were more than a handful of times in which the words on screen were challenging to read as a result of the white text being set against a white (or similarly colored) background. Love, 2020 certainly isn’t the first film to suffer from decisions like this, but it hinders the viewer's ability to receive information, to be pulled further into the film. The on-screen text is meant to provide pivotal information, to continue to drive this documentary forward–but missing some of that key information knocks the film down a few notches.
There are a lot of issues with Love, 2020. Some that exist within the narrative perpetuated by Joseph and each of the interviewees, some technical issues with the on-screen text, and some with the fact that some of the tennis players’ stories are left unfinished. We get a ton of coverage of certain aspects of this pandemic-ridden tennis tournament, but when things inch toward the end they are left unsaid, left to text on the screen.
This is not a documentary for everyone. The politics present in it will antagonize, the unfinished stories will frustrate, and the technical issues will simply make it difficult to follow. There’s something here, some substance that needed to be let out into the world–but there are aspects of it that don’t see the light of day. In short, you have to be a fan of tennis in order to appreciate Love, 2020.
Written & Directed by Jacqueline Joseph.
Starring Kristie Ahn, Rohan Bopanna, Diede de Groot, Stephane Houdet, Yui Kamiji, etc.
6/10 = WATCH IT FOR FREE
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