Federer: Twelve Final Days film review — lachrymose lap of honour lacks game

Tennis matches and documentaries thrive on the same thing: tension. That ingredient is almost entirely missing from the slick but unrevealing Federer: Twelve Final Days. We know from the start that the 20-time Grand Slam champion will play his last professional match at the 2022 Laver Cup, that it will involve a dream doubles pairing with Rafael Nadal, that they will lose, but a massive outpouring of love will follow. Above all, we know: there will be blub.

Roger Federer has always worn his heart on his sleeve as proudly as a sponsor’s logo, and there is no shying away from that in this effusively lachrymose lap of honour. If you’re a fan, pack a hanky or three. If you’re not, pack one anyway for the scenes involving his children. At one point you will see our hero breaking down crying while watching footage of himself breaking down crying.

Federer has also always been a controversy-free zone, a model of Swiss neutrality, naturally averse to misbehaviour and careful to tiptoe around politics. Don’t come expecting the indiscretions of last year’s Boom! Boom! The World Vs Boris Becker. The worst you’ll get here is a bit of swearing and an acknowledgment that: “I didn’t give Novak [Djokovic] the respect he deserved.”

What Federer ushered in was a new age of niceness. Even arch-nemesis Nadal became his bosom buddy. That adorable, giggly bromance is front and centre here. We see Federer anticipating the Spaniard’s arrival like a nervous groom on the eve of his wedding (Djokovic playing best man by pointing out he is wearing the wrong shirt) and mentioning his wife and Nadal in the same breath: “I knew there were two things that would trigger me: Mirka and Rafa.”

Federer’s only enemy is injury — a troublesome knee that finally halted this most graceful of movers — and directors Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia don’t skimp on the pathos. It was Sabia who shot the new footage, but you suspect the hand of Kapadia (Senna, Diego Maradona) in felicitous flourishes such as intercutting between the 40-year-old Federer lying prone on a physio’s table and old clips of him collapsed on court after a tournament victory.

Best of all for tennis obsessives are moments that catch the players unguarded in the locker room: discussing who on the tour has the most irritating grunt or dropping the facade of diplomacy to react tetchily to the sting of a loss. But overall while the professional career may be over, the brand must be protected.

Twelve Final Days is big on PR but low on actual tennis. Talking heads hymn the beauty of Federer’s silky, seemingly effortless technique but analysis of what made it so is fleeting. In the absence of drama, the filmmakers could have opted for more poetry in the style of Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait or John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection. The irascible American, who here calls Federer “Baryshnikov on a tennis court”, wouldn’t deny that the Swiss star is the real king of that realm. If any sportsman ever deserved a deep-dive cinematic study of athletic genius, it is surely Roger Federer.

★★☆☆☆

In UK cinemas now and on Amazon Prime Video from June 20