I Love The Ending of ‘Marty Supreme’
Let’s talk about it.
More from Hung Up this week: 2025-in-review … Have you checked on the Barb in your life? … a chat about Heated Rivalry in the Substack app.
Major spoilers for Marty Supreme follow.
In the lobby of the Ritz Carlton, Marty Mauser, a table tennis player whose boldness borders on maniacal, catches the eye of Kay Stone, an actress who is most famous from movies made before Marty was even born. The table of reporters interviewing him (press that, no doubt, he arranged for himself) are distracted by Kay gliding across the lobby and through double doors. Later on, from his room — a suite that he can’t afford — Marty (Timothee Chalamet) calls down to the room Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow1) shares with her husband. There’s something ravishing about the exchange, Marty swaddled in a hotel robe, playing with the phone cord in his hands, Kay doodling in her newspaper. She’s confused by the call, then amused by the caller, then irritated by the distraction, then remembers that she doesn’t actually need to stay on the phone.
But I want to keep talking to you, Marty reasons. It’s one of my favorite moments in Marty Supreme: the plainness of his request. It’s electric with romance! He’s not a smooth talker, but he is a talker; he can make any moment last. Kay is about to hang up as he tells her to look out of her window, across the courtyard. The 23-year-old on the phone, the one who swears he’s a champion of a sport she knows nothing about and is staying in a room that she doesn’t know how he can afford, promises he can make an apple appear in a bowl of fruit on a table across the garden. He counts to three, and keeps his promise: out of nowhere, a red apple is deposited into the bowl. It’s like magic.
That’s a happy scene, alive with promise and desire. By the time Marty Supreme ends, Marty Mauser has criss-crossed the globe, only to win one match that will never matter. He barges into the New York hospital, identifying himself as the father of the baby he’s spent the entire movie denying. He nuzzles the ear of Rachel, his non-girlfriend, and admits that he loves her. He wordlessly acknowledges his mother. He stands in the hallway, looking in on a room full of newborns, and asks a nurse to hold up his child. He begins to weep.
