In the late 1990s and early 2000s, David and Victoria Beckham were among the most famous people in the world.
The newspapers could not have invented a couple more attractive to the British public than that formed by David Beckham, one of the greatest English football players, and Victoria Beckham (née Adams), member of one of the most popular pop groups. Britain’s most beloved, the Spice Girls. Britain was their country and we lived there, for a while.
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But due to the worldwide craze for football and the couple’s subsequent move to the United States, the British are no longer the only ones who know everything about them – over the years, their deeds and gestures, personal and professional. , have made headlines wherever they are printed.
A new documentary in four parts, Beckhamtraces the career of David Beckham and looks back at the omnipresence of the media in the couple’s lives, examining its effects on two individuals rather than two celebrities.
This documentary has many heartening aspects, particularly for those of us who remember the Britain of twenty years ago. Their total look violet flamboyant on their wedding day, the great period of Beckham madness, when Manchester United fans asked their parents for haircut that he wore at the time.
There is also, playing out in the locker room, the series of tumultuous relationships that Beckham has maintained with his various managers. Without forgetting the emotion of discovering that the director of the documentary, Fisher Stevens, played Hugo in Succession.
The prosaic realities of their long-term relationship
What I will remember from it, for my part, is the portrait of a couple that is emerging. David and Victoria’s story began as a modern fairy tale. A handsome pop star and a handsome footballer meet and begin a clandestine romantic relationship, trying to escape the gaze of the media. Naturally, secrecy dies short, and the documentary shows that the media made them pay for their affront, while the public exercised its ordinary voyeurism.
In one episode, Victoria recalls a song that supporters sang in stadiums when David played: “Posh Spice takes it in the ass.” She speaks about it today with detachment. But she says that one day, the woman sitting next to her in the stands turned to her, and, unable to find anything else to say, offered her a mint.
The beginnings of their love story are charming. Friends and family describe the couple spending the night on the phone, with David traveling from London to Manchester, a four-hour drive, to see Victoria for twenty minutes. Busy with their respective careers, separated by tours and training, they overcame obstacles. What moves me most, however, are the prosaic realities of their long-term relationship.
Victoria admits with refreshing frankness that she still doesn’t like football, even if she loves watching David play. They tease each other; Victoria makes fun of David because he gets offended that she doesn’t appreciate his manic side, David makes fun of Victoria because she said she belonged to the working class in her youth while her father had a Rolls-Royce, and he confides that it is a “annoying” par moments.
Stevens also allows them to contradict each other, since they are almost always interviewed separately. David says Victoria was understanding when he expressed a sudden desire to leave Los Angeles and return to Europe, and immediately after, Victoria said otherwise.
“Honestly, it was tense between the two of us.”
The last episode returns to the infamous (for the British anyway) rumors that have been circulating in 2004, while David was playing for Real Madrid. Stevens, whose voice is heard throughout the documentary, never asks either of them if these rumors – according to which he cheated on Victoria with her personal assistant at the time – were true. This omission will leave viewers hungry for revelations – even if, in my opinion, it is quite easy to read between the lines.
It is also more interesting to learn how they held up in a period when David’s alleged infidelity was making headlines, when they had young children to protect. Or rather, to see how difficult it is for them to always talk about all that. Both say the interview process for the series was a kind of therapy.
“It was the first time that our relationship had been under such pressure”, says David. As for Victoria, she admits: “It felt like the world was against us, and honestly, it was tense between the two of us.” Neither of them really knows how they got out of it. But they got through it, they conclude, somehow.
All this looks more like the trajectory of a long relationship than a story embellished by press officers or the fiction of perfect happiness. Their story is not everyone’s. The Beckhams have an astronomical fortune and worldwide fame. But in their own way, during their twenty-four years of marriage, they weathered the same storms as all couples of comparable longevity. And they floundered, just like anyone else.
Things seem to be going well now – at least on camera. In the scenes where we see the Beckhams together, they give the touching and comforting feeling of an authentic complicity. In the last episode, they dance awkwardly at a family barbecue to the sound of “Islands in the Stream”.
We will never know the whole truth about the Beckham couple, and that’s fine. It’s their private matter. But it is quite surprising that a documentary dedicated to a footballer manages to convey the idea that a relationship is a complex, evolving team game. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. In any case, the game continues for the Beckhams.
2023-10-18 09:08:33
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