Challengers

The Plot: Former tennis player Tashi (Zendaya) is now in her early 30s and is concerned about her husband Art (Mike Faist). He’s a pro tennis player, but age is not on his side and this is evident in his losing streak. They settle on a local tournament to warm him up before he faces the bigger fish out there. There’s a problem though: also competing in this tournament is Patrick (Josh O’Connor). He’s down on his luck, out of money and sleeping in his car, keen to prove himself at a difficult time in his life. It’s not going to get any easier, as this highly competitive trio have a very tangled history that stretches back years…

 

The Verdict: Delayed from its original autumn release last year due to Hollywood strife, Challengers has finally emerged onto the tennis court in all its sweaty intensity and potentially provocative promotional material. Has it been worth the long wait to see Zendaya duke it out on screen with Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, while they battle their own personal demons on and off the court? The answer is simple: absolutely. Luca Guadagnino’s latest film is, like many of his films, directed with visual flair, has a throbbing soundtrack and a near-obsessive attention to character and performance. It’s a tennis film that’s unlike any other and may very well be the one to beat going forward. While there have been plenty of tennis-based films before with decidedly mixed results, Challengers takes the tennis film up several notches while keeping its beady eyes on the ball as it whizzes back and forth.

That’s an apt metaphor for the film’s structure. Justin Kuritzkes excellent script is ostensibly written as a love triangle where each character supports the other until the triangle starts to shift and morph into something else entirely. It becomes a fiercely competitive film wherein two childhood best friends find themselves at war, on and off the court, over the woman they both love. Guadagnino’s approach is to go all Tarantino on this, playing with time and structuring his film like an actual tennis match. The film volleys back and forth between timeframes, gradually revealing the conflict at the core of this trio’s relationship. It starts when Art and Patrick first encounter Tashi at a match, both eager young men entranced by her alluring nature. In later years, there’s a chance to settle scores and unfinished business as Art has an opportunity to finally beat Patrick on the court. Tashi has her own motivations, a woman who knows what she wants and goes for it like a tiger with her prey.

It’s a clever structure to use, as it only intensifies the high emotions running through the film like a bullet. There’s not a hint of soapy melodrama here and it’s all the better for it. Every scene serves a purpose to drive the web-like plot forward, deepening the emotional current without cheapening it. It’s also as steamy and sexy as it needs to be, sweat glistening on bodies pushed to their physical limit. At a time when millennials are apparently saying that they want less sex in films, Guadagnino generates a nuclear-meltdown level of onscreen heat with his trio of actors without resorting to the kind of cheesy sex scenes that the film’s promotional material might otherwise suggest. It’s a lesson for filmmakers and on-set intimacy co-ordinators that you can achieve a lot more by showing less and concentrating on that all-important chemistry between actors that simply can’t be manufactured.

Zendaya is astonishing here, moving well beyond the teenage roles that have followed her for the last few years. She’s grown in leaps and bounds as an actor and shows an admirable, Kristen Stewart-style attention to carefully picking roles that push her range and test her ability by working with notable directors who respond in kind. It will be interesting to see what she does next. Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor follow her lead and are equally up to the challenge, their camaraderie still evident even when their characters are nearly at each other’s throats. Guadagnino is a terrific director of actors, extracting highly concentrated performances that stay true to the characters and where they’re at in a particular moment of time. Challengers is an intense film that asks lots of questions and provides only some of the answers (in a clever way), but it does so with eye-catching style and rigorous attention to detail. In this tennis match of love divided three ways, it’s game, set and match for an overall winner of a film.

Rating: 4 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor