Baggio: The Divine Ponytail is an Italian autobiography film based on the life of the living soccer player Baggio. The movie is currently streaming on Netflix, which is 1 hour 31 minutes long. Letizia Lamartire helmed this biopic.
The film is all about Roberto Baggio, who built his career on his own, belonging to a working-class family he became one of the loved soccer players. The film showed his life from the beginning to the part where he fought his injury, stood up to play, and found his faith in Buddhism.
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The film is made in the Italian language, and Andrea Arcangeli played Baggio’s role. The movie opens with a scene where a 7- to 8-year-old kid walks into a room explaining Baggio’s penalty shot. The camera shifts from that kid’s room to the football ground where Baggio is preparing his shot.
From the first frame of the movie, you see the essence of Baggio’s footballer life, but it was is about the man Roberto. So, who is Roberto Baggio? Just like Roberto Baggio’s penalty miss, this biopic may seem to be a miss too. Director Letizia couldn’t wrap up the film properly, and even if there were many aspects to cover, Lamartire left the biopic underdeveloped.
Andrea Arcangeli, as the lead, tries to pull off the character by showing various emotions, but the director’s rush to complete the movie left it loosely bound, which didn’t connect with me.
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What did I like about Baggio: The Divine Ponytail?
I am no sports fanatic, and football is something I have no clue about. So to get to know about something different and learn about his life was another experience for me. Andrea did a good job as Baggio along with Valentina Bellè, Thomas Trabacchi, Andrea Pennacchi as other cast members.
The camera work is good, along with the light balance of the film. Additionally, I got to know that the footballer played in 3 separate World Cups. He played in Juventus, AC Milan and even Inter Milan; he is a miracle player. He got his nickname Divine Ponytail because of his unique way of tying up his hair in a ponytail. He was truly divine, but human Baggio was missing in the film somewhere.
What didn’t I like at all?
This part of the list may extend a bit. I really like watching biopics, so I had a lot of expectations. I have watched many biopic movies to date, but this one couldn’t make a proper impact. There are some rapid scene shifts that will make you lose the connection with the narration.
Being a biopic, the script could have been more powerful, and as a footballer’s story, the football match scenes should have been fully developed and assembled, but they weren’t well established. The language was a bit weird in my ears, but the subtitles came to my rescue, even though the film couldn’t keep me engaged. It felt like the makers of the film edited the pieces hurridly, and thus I couldn’t maintain that connection I wanted to keep after watching the first shot of the footballer in the film.
Baggio: The Divine Ponytail is currently streaming on Netflix.