Stephen Belber’s “Match” is a slight but affecting film built around a stirring central performance by Patrick Stewart.
He plays Tobias, a one-time principal male dancer who traveled the world with a ballet company and now makes his living as a choreographer and Juilliard instructor. But, on the day we meet him, he’s excited by the prospect of visitors.
Specifically, he’s going to meet Lisa and Mike (Carla Gugino, Matthew Lillard), who have traveled from Seattle to interview him for her thesis, something about the creativity of dance collectives of the 1960s. When they meet at a coffee shop near Tobias’ apartment in the north Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood Heights, they’re obviously going to have their hands full getting Tobias to talk about anything except his own career.
He’s a chatterbox on that subject, catty, bubbly and gregarious – mostly, it seems, for lack of anyone else to talk to on a regular basis. Now he’s got an audience and he’s going to milk it for everything it’s worth.
But, as their conversation adjourns from the diner to Tobias’ apartment, it quickly becomes apparent that Mike and Lisa have an unspoken agenda.
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