Who knew tennis could be so hot? Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, Challengers, understands that one of the big aspects that make tennis fun, like any other sport, is long-standing rivalries between players that cultivate over the course of their careers. But the Italian director, who often infuses themes of yearning and desire in his films, spices things up further with a complicated romance, making every racket smash between two players come from a place of anger and jealousy. Challengers is an absurdly sexy and thrilling tale about messy relationships of its hyper-competitive characters, as much as it is about the sport itself.
The film centers around top tennis pro Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and his wife Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a former tennis prodigy whose career got halted by a serious knee injury. As her husband’s head coach, Tashi vicariously lives out her once promising career through Art. And for her, winning is the only thing that matters. She enters her husband in a low-stakes regional tournament filled with unseeded, no-name players in the hopes that Art will overcome his ongoing slump. Their life is derailed when they unexpectedly cross paths with Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), Art’s former childhood friend and practice partner, and interestingly, Tashi’s ex-boyfriend. Patrick’s career has taken on a completely different path compared to the power couple, as he’s struggling to make ends meet with pocket change from his occasional tournament winnings.
During the film’s opening, we see Art and Patrick having an intense, high-stakes match. And over the course of Challengers, the story rallies back and forth between the present day and different points in their careers, effectively shaping how Art and Patrick have turned from being best friends to building a deep rivalry, and Tashi’s involvement in all of this. There are times when the film’s fractured timeline can get a bit messy and intricate, but everything is told with purpose thanks to the sharp screenplay of Justin Kuritzkes (husband of Celine Song, the writer and director of Past Lives, which, funnily enough, also features a love triangle). And with each flashback, it’s revealed that, although Art and Patrick pine for the same woman, the former childhood friends could’ve both been potential lovers themselves.
The main driving force of Challengers is Zendaya. Fresh off an impressive performance in Dune: Part Two, she carries herself with a palpable confidence that tells us she’s found her footing as an actress. A complete opposite of her role as Chani, here she plays Tashi as a manipulative hustler, whose motives are primarily driven by her own goals in the sport. O’Connor’s laid back performance as Patrick gives him a countercultural edge which serves as the perfect foil for Tashi’s mean streak. Meanwhile, Faist adeptly plays Art as the nice guy on the verge of breaking apart from his wife’s tough love.
While it may seem that the messy rift among Art, Patrick, and Tashi takes most of the focus, Challengers thankfully does not skimp out on the tennis part. This is still a sports movie after all, and it’s the most fun when we see the trio serving forehands and backhands to the blood-pumping, synth-ridden score of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The tennis scenes deliver a jolt of adrenaline, matched by Guadagnino’s aggressive framing of every swing and smash. And sometimes, he changes it up by giving us POV camera shots following the ball as it whirls around the court. For a film with copious amounts of steamy kissing, there are surprisingly no sex scenes, because the tennis ultimately is the sex – an intimate exchange between two people in peak physical form. Challengers thrives in its own boldness, a statement that this film is here not to entertain, but to win.
Rating:
The Talking Screen 