by Lafcadio De La Foret

Created on: June 06, 2008   Last Updated: June 08, 2008

Live television. Interior shot of the supporting structure of a magnificent white-painted stadium. It's not where the action is. In the foreground, screen left, is a shocking yellow tennis ball imprinted with "Roland Garros 2008". There is sound, but only the babble of far-off crowds, passers-by and the hum of some distant supporting machinery. Suddenly the ball disappears, snatched by some disembodied hand, male I think it happened so fast - and now there is nothing but architecture and a less colourful picture remaining. The steel girders continue to hold up the stadium for an interminable time. Interest fades.

Thwok!

It is the unmistakeable sound of a new tennis ball impacting on a surface. But, glancing at the screen, it cannot be seen.

Thwok!

This time it appears as a fluorescent blur coming from the top of the screen and rebounding back up, out of sight, controlled by some unseen hand (or IS it?).

Thwok!

It now has the rhythm of a tennis match, with each thowk occurring roughly the time it would take a ball being struck from the deuce court to travel diagonally across the net and land in the opponent's deuce court. It is vertical tennis, but without the players and without the racquets. And just when the vertical rally reaches something for sports commentators to comment upon statistically speaking, it stops. There is no roar of the crowd, nor applause it just stops. Background noise of the steel supporting the stadium blankets the sound track.

Interest fades again, and while the mind is elsewhere, the ball again appears in the foreground, centre front where it settles in for a longer rain-delay.

An indeterminate time later, the disembodied hand walks into the picture from screen left, using the first two fingers as legs in the universal sign for walking, approaches the ball. With all the aplomb of Zinadane Zidane, the finger feet reach the furry ball and the index finger-foot football kicks the ball out of the frame.

I love watching the French Open Tennis (BBCi-EuroSport) and having digested nearly 20 hours worth (rain delays included) I'm ready to declare it a truly avant garde television production.

The French revere their Renoir/Goggard/Truffault/Malle images from the cinema and that spirit is now taking new vision in what some might consider to be over-the-top images being broadcast to the world from Roland Garros Stadium. And it is definitively French, not just in the mini-drama screen scenes during rain delays, but also when real players command our attention.

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