Phil W. Bayles

Or: How I Learned I Have Weird Taste in Sports Movies

You probably don’t need me to tell you how brilliant The Queen’s Gambit is.

In an era of infinite streaming providers, where content is becoming more and more niche, this Netflix miniseries about a female chess prodigy in the 1950s has somehow become a universal TV phenomenon.

Frankly, it’s not hard to see why. The ensemble cast are all amazing, none more so than Anya Taylor-Joy as protagonist Beth Harmon. The writing is superb; an intricate character study about addiction and the loneliness that comes with being the master of your domain. The production design is utterly sumptuous, with gorgeous sets and costumes that are all shot beautifully. Most impressive of all, though, is the way it makes chess interesting to watch.

Please don’t take this the wrong way – I like chess, and I can play it. At least, I know how the horses movie, and that the little fellas lined up in front are not in fact called prawns. But chess is a cerebral game, one of calculation and consideration, and that just isn’t very cinematic.

Except The Queen’s Gambit makes it fascinating. When the players are in their stride the camera never stops, swooping around them as they snatch pieces from each other. When they’re deep in concentration it pulls right in, allowing us to see every moment of triumph and heartbreak that passes over their faces.

The point is, like the very best sports movies, The Queen’s Gambit is compelling even if you don’t understand a single thing about the sport being played. But if you think chess is the weirdest sport to make a movie around, allow me to introduce you to Populaire: a French romantic comedy from 2012, set against the exciting world off… competitive speed typing.

Apparently, about the same time that Beth Harmon was wiping the floor with grandmasters of chess, there were international contests held to see who could use a typewriter the fastest, with men and women approaching speeds of up to 200 words per minute.

I swear to you I’m not making this up.

On paper it sounds like a frankly terrible idea for a film, but it’s utterly enthralling because it does a lot of the same things that make The Queen’s Gambit so fun. There’s a wonderful Technicolor gloss to the sets, costumes and cinematography that evokes French classics like The Young Ladies of Rochefort. It helps that the film’s stars, Romain Duris and Déborah François, look like they could have stepped out of the 50s themselves.

But when the competitions begin in earnest, everything gets ramped up to 11 – we get close ups of fingers dancing across keyboards, hands throwing the carriage return back with an almighty wallop, and faces burning with intensity. For as long as it’s going on, it’s hard to imagine any sport being as exciting as competitive speed typing.

Outside of those scenes, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting if you’ve seen basically any romantic comedy. Déborah François plays Rose, the klutzy provincial girl who dreams of being a modern woman (which apparently means being a secretary, but hey, it’s the 50s). Romain Duris plays Louis, her debonair boss who chain smokes and calls her ‘pumpkin’. Sparks start to fly as their relationship goes from secretary/boss to athlete/trainer, but Louis insists that they can’t let feelings get in the way of her chances of winning… right up to the moment that love wins the day.

Still, let it not be said that director Régis Roinsard never deviates from formula, even if Populaire feels decidedly less like a female empowerment story than The Queen’s Gambit. The world of speed typing in the film is dominated by women, and it’s repeatedly stated that the men watching wouldn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up. There’s even a tiny bit of playful satire in there at the expensive of stupidly gendered marketing. As Rose becomes more popular she becomes the sponsor of the ‘Populaire’; a typewriter designed for ladies’ daintier hands (that’s also bright pink, bien sûr), which only succeeds in slowing her down in competition.

In the end, Populaire may be about as substantial as a macaron. But it’s just as sweet as one too, and we could all use a little more of that right now.