Jeu, set et match
Jean-Pierre Brouillaud
A few weeks after my wedding, I achieved my first Internet connection. The conjunction of those two events still makes me wonder, even today. Which of the two, in the end, was more important? What follows would show to what extent they were interwoven, and to what extent this interweaving was going to blow everything up in mid-air. His whole life long, he has been obsessed with Guillermo Vilas, his childhood idol. He knows everything there is to know about the Argentinean tennis player’s career. One day, thanks to the Internet, he decides to acquire every single item he can find that’s connected to the champion, and to build the world’s most exhaustive collection about the object of his obsession. Inextricably tangled up in his psychological problems, the narrator gradually loses his way, hanging on in near desperation to his passion for Vilas, letting it wreak havoc with his personal, professional and family lives… This downward slide, both tragic – because the narrator’s life is coming apart at the seams – and comical – because of the somewhat surrealistc nature of his behavior, glitters with humor. A lonely young man’s unconditional admiration for the tennis player Guillermo Vilas. Or, how this lonely young man gradually descends into madness... Black comedy guaranteed.