(92 mins, PG)
Directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno; starring Zinedine Zidane
Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait is an art work, which is to say it's a self-conscious piece by a two video installation artists, Paris-based Philippe Parreno and Scotsman Douglas Gordon. Throughout a 2004 match between Real Madrid and Villarreal, they focused 17 super-35mm cameras on the home side's star midfield player, Zinedine Zidane. We see him in close-up and long shot; take in a lot of his shirt ('Zidane 5' on the back, 'Siemens Mobile' on the front) and his boots (enough to satisfy the most desperate foot fetishist); watch him spit, sweat, gesture, shout, pull up his socks, smile (twice), laugh at an unexplained joke (once), show some brilliant ball control; set up a goal (though the directors have to cut in a TV clip to show Ronaldo scoring it); and finally witness him joining a fight and getting a red card.
Along the way, there are subtitles quoting Zidane on his craft in terms not entirely unlike the gnomic reflections of his fellow Frenchman, Eric Cantona. It's hypnotic, self-indulgent and lacking in context, rather like doting parents at a nativity play concentrating on their daughter's Mary or their son's Joseph to the exclusion of the other performers and the Gospel message. But you do want to talk about it afterwards.