To its credit, Enter the Slipstream keeps its story relatively straightforward and its focus appreciably narrowed on one particular subject out of however many could theoretically have taken the spotlight, had things gone differently. The overarching subject is the Tour de France that took place in the summer of 2020, just after the whole world went through a series of lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic but well before any sort of vaccine against it had hit the market. That in itself would make for an interesting story or perhaps a cautionary tale about the advisability of such things. Then again, the entire economy of professional bicycling that leads to an event like the Tour de France depends, fittingly enough, upon constant forward motion.
That could be said of most sports institutions, of course, but bicycling teams and the managers who lead them rely entirely upon the funding of donors, which is the chief concern of the team at the center of this story. It is especially true, given the conflicts that eventually stack on top of each other when its rising star, an unconventionally gifted and passionate competitor named Rigoberto Urán is gravely injured during a crucial race on the circuit leading to the big finale. Urán is the specific face of director Ted Youngs’ documentary, which covers the several months it took to get the bicycler back on track.
As the story of a specific bicycler’s journey back to the top, the film is relatively engaging. We are treated to interviews by his contemporaries about the sheer talent on display, such as how hills and climbs barely faze the man, and how much it might mean to him on a humanistic level to win the honor of an event on this scale. He races on the professional stage, and the biggest surprise here is how much overtime the word “professional” is working in this case. The money he wins during these tournaments is the sole money used to support his family, which means the grievous injury he suffers during a particularly horrifying crash – involving enough damage to the clavicle bone, according to a doctor’s account here, to prove fatal to others – has more than one level of devastation to it.
When the movie is about Urán, then, it’s quite affecting, but Youngs widens his scope in other places to bring us through an incredibly basic history of the Tour de France as an institution (beginning as a joke, building as something more sincere, and arriving in the present as a global phenomenon) and the wider threat presented to Urán’s bicycling team and their manager, Jonathan “JV” Vaughters, when their biggest competitor’s injury threatens the general affordability of the team within the sport. That feels like the wrong angle from which to approach the story being told in a documentary with a scope this limited.
The problem doesn’t so much lie in Urán as a documentary subject, since the movie is at its best when focused on his story and his future prospects. Enter the Slipstream is simply unengaging as a delivery device of this story.
Photo courtesy of Monument Releasing
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