There is a thin line between being admirably ambitious and being intolerably mercenary, but in the leading awards-season contender Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet shows himself determined to dance atop that tightrope. 

This constitutes an act of substantial actorly bravery on the part of Chalamet, who, along with the acting chops he demonstrated in Call Me by Your Name and A Complete Unknown, seems to have been born with a genetic predisposition for obnoxious self-promotion that is unique even for his attention-grabbing profession. This makes his performance in the new movie, on which he also served as a producer, revealing if not outright autobiographical.

That Chalamet has been richly honored for his performance — he just won a Golden Globe — will do nothing for his humility. But if he continues to give performances as rich as this one, and to shepherd to the screen movies as fine as this one, who cares?

In Marty Supreme, Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser, whose life, in some broad strokes, resembles that of Marty Reisman, a table tennis impresario in the 1950s and 1960s. In the movie, set in New York in 1952, Marty is given the whirling zeal and the same unlikely athletic pursuit, but it is a testament to the tenacious intensity of Chalamet, and the skill of director-co-writer Josh Safdie, that it renders hypnotic a game that is, for the unconverted, frustrating in its smallness and in the hollow bounce of its little ball. Yet, Marty not only plays the game in dramatic fashion, but has invested considerable mental energy in ways to improve its popularity in America. For example, Marty notes that the whiteness of the ball necessitates that players dress in black, but would it not be better, even classier, if the players wore white and the ball was painted orange?

In fact, one of the........

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