Seeing Diamantino

There are two ways to play chess: plan ahead to achieve an outcome or look at the situation on the board and simply come up with the next best move. The second method is how computers play chess. Each move is the beginning of a new game. Long-term planning doesn’t enter into it. Instead the computer uses a “brute force” approach that abstains from trying to mimic any creative human thought.

I wonder if exceptional soccer players don’t have something of this same ability: to understand, or read, the situation on the field as it unfolds in a flickering sequence without past or future, that is, without thought, and find the optimal response. Diamantino, in the eponymously titled new film by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, certainly has this gift for “being in the zone,” or, in Diamantino’s peculiar universe, seeing “the fluffy puppies.”

But Diamantino’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. Genius often comes in a package: the brilliance is part and parcel of an overall mental landscape, the consequence even, of a corresponding flaw. In Diamantino’s case that flaw is stupidity, basically (reviewers have pointed out the character’s resemblance to the Portuguese soccer star Ronaldo).

Good for Diamantino then that he also has empathy. He is steadfastly a good person. When he sees something deeply disturbing — refugees adrift at sea — he is forced to reflect. Predictably, his ability to be in the zone suffers and the fluffy puppies melt away. Diamantino misses the most important goal of his career and becomes the laughing stock of his nation. He also grows a pair of boobs.

What happens next in this satire-filled and campy masterpiece is one of the greatest love stories ever brought to the screen. That may be overstating it a bit, but rest assured: Diamantino is not only an incredibly smart and funny film, filled with hilarious details, many of them design elements such as the endearing narcissist’s bedsheets and pillows, emblazoned with enormous and tackily rendered images of his visage — imagine using one of those print on demand services to put an image of, well, yourself on all those items in your house that can be imprinted, from coffee mugs to calendars to throw pillows — it also wears its heart in the exactly right place for our time. So much so that as the final image faded to black, I wanted to cheer, raise my arms in victory, and shout goal!