Luca Guadagnino has hit the mainstream! I had to chase down Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria in arthouses, and backtrack through DVDs and streaming to view his earlier work, but Challengers was everywhere a few months ago, from Reading, to Village, and HOYTS, probably thanks to Zendaya. And look, that image of Zendaya getting kissed down her neck on both sides has lingered with me since the first moment I saw it; if this movie is set to spotlight Zendaya as a sex symbol, then that should be all I need to have me come-hither 😍 But I was underwhelmed by Guadagnino’s latest, Bones and All, so here’s his opportunity to find a way back into my winner’s locker room.
Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) is in the final of an ATP Challenger, with three rows of seats intently watching on. But then we see his wife, former tennis protégé Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), watching the sports channel in their hotel room, and it states that Art has won multiple Grand Slam titles through his career, so what’s going on? Why is he at a Challenger? Well, don’t worry, because over the course of two hours, this movie will detail how Art’s opponent across the net, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), is also Art’s estranged former doubles partner, and the plot will reveal many intricacies that tie Art, Patrick, and Tashi, together, through a complex whirl of flashbacks. In the present, Art must win this Challenger to regain some confidence heading into an elusive US Open campaign, and Patrick must win for what might be his final shot at the big leagues, while there’s so much more at stake. Who’s ready to rumble?
First, just a casual thought I had. This movie states, and we are meant to believe, that Art has won many Grand Slams; and that’s just a disorientating notion. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, have famously been the most dominant tennis players in history over the past twenty years, and are we just expected to ignore them? Of course, we are, as this is a fictional movie after all, and I do get into Challengers; but I’ve never seen a tennis movie set in fantasyland before. Battle of the Sexes, Borg v McEnroe, King Richard, are all tennis biopics; even Match Point and Wimbledon, which dealt in fictional characters, acknowledged the likes of Tim Henman and Lleyton Hewitt as their contemporaries, and those latter movies never expected us to believe their characters were the most dominant of the sport either 💁♂️ But I suppose, you know, I see Danny Glover walk out as the US President in 2012, or Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks!, and I don’t make any fuss of it; I’ve just never seen anything like this for the world of tennis. And there’s always a first.
Challengers – it didn’t take me long to care about the result of the match. Knowing Guadagnino’s sensibilities, and going by the context of the trailer, I actually rewatched Match Point earlier in the week thinking there might be some sexy similarities to detect. I was expecting more of an artsy movie with Challengers, as we traverse through these character’s lives, with tennis merely being the background chosen to enforce the movie’s themes. But no, Challengers is plenty about tennis, as well as romance, and even falling firmly into the category of thriller, leaving my potential comparison in its dust. If anything, Challengers most reminded me of 1998’s Snake Eyes in how we keep going back to the same event but recontexualising it every time (although, Challengers is able to hold my attention for the full runtime, whereas Nic Cage’s venture nosedives at the halfway point #potentialhottake). But Challengers manages a very bold intensity, while in many ways remaining a small movie, in that it only really concerns the lives of the main three players, with a laser focus blowtorch burning a single spot of purposeful drama out of their jangled relationship. Guadagnino is a notoriously sensual director – he’ll linger on a touch or a curtain blowing in the breeze to inform a tone, and more so in his other movies – but here, I found him most inventive in his means of displaying a tennis match, through shots underneath the court, or the ball’s POV, or even that shot that made me flinch, as if Tashi seems to legitimately strike the ball straight atcha! Thank God I wasn’t wearing 3D goggles for that!
Yet Guadagnino doesn’t have to conduct to his full symphony when this story is so chief, so baller. I suppose it’s about time I mentioned the writer of this caper, and that is Justin Kuritzkes, delivering his first ever script 😳 Did he make a deal with the devil for it to be this good; what the hell?! 😮 Challengers is such a strong character study, designed to employ the actors to take charge, even putting them on a pedestal. You know, it makes me so happy to look back across my judgements, of movies like May December for instance, that try to do the same thing with character and reoccurring motifs and don’t quite get there, because when something as rhythmic as Challengers comes along, it deserves my full applause. I’m just a sucker for tangible symbology, and this movie wields it like a samurai – like the examples of how Art has been wearing sports tape on his neck throughout the final tennis match, and it’s shown to be where Tashi had been stroking Art night before, as if to suggest how she’s the strain. Or how Patrick and Tashi sleep together again in Patrick’s car, and it pairs so succulently up against that billboard ad we have seen throughout, indicating how even though Tashi and Art have appeared happy and successful in the past, there has always been a car in between them, a stand-in for how they both treated Patrick 🤯 I’ll be blown down if this isn’t one of the best movies of the year.
Alright, I want to talk about that scene, the neck kissing scene. The moment starts out completely erotic, but then… Tashi! It just can’t go down like that! 😱 Men spend so much time hoping you’re into whatever it is we’re doing, and you’re just pretending, to get two boys to kiss 😠 Wicked, wicked, child. Analytically, I could see where the scene was heading, with the two boy’s mouths moving closer and closer together – and it’s 2024; if we have to get a devil’s threesome, in the pursuit of equality, to match the same unbridled sexuality we once got in Wild Things, then so be it. But it never happened ☹☹ Tossing nudity and sex aside like an old relic, Zendaya must relish this role, because she gets to do EVERYTHING in this movie. She’s appropriately young, mature, fiery, ambitious, sexy, and sad, whenever it’s needed. If you want to talk about range from a young actress, you need not look further than Zendaya in Challengers. I was gob-smacked impressed by her, and I’ve already been a huge Zendaya fan anyway. But now, I must also refer to her as “the hit-maker”, after I’ve given top scores to so many movies she’s been in, including the Dune series, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Greatest Showman, and Malcom & Marie. Acting as producer here too, she is catapulting herself to the top of the industry.
And I loved Mike Faist’s angst in West Side Story – I think I even nominated him for a Slice Award. Here, he plays the stiff, most of the time, so he doesn’t get to shoot the lights out dramatically like I reckon he could have if he’d had the opposite role, but he’s still respectable. It’s weird that he doesn’t have the opposing role, acting more often the heel as Patrick does, but I suppose it’s a moot point, because Josh O’Connor also does a stunning job with the material. And speaking of O’Connor, who is this guy? I know I’ve seen him somewhere, but where? Oh, Emma. as Mr. Elton, playing pathetic comedically in that caper 👍 I really didn’t want to be the one to come out of Challengers suggesting that I connected more with Patrick, because he’s the languishing lover while the others have it all, and in the end I won’t, because what’s most powerful about this movie is how all three of these characters are so richly noble and flawed in their own way. It’s poetry.
And I knew Patrick was going to tee up the ball in the center of the racquet in the final moments, even two minutes before he did – I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be right in preempting a movie, more in my life. Sometimes you can see what’s coming a mile away because it’s cliché, but sometimes it’s simply meant to be. And I’m not saying it’s great because I wanted it to happen, but because it was the best thing to happen, where the language of the movie reinforcing this tit-for-tat trio’s relationship was destined. Then there’s the true ending, and okay, there might be a stretch in fabrication in getting Art and Patrick to hug like that, but this movie’s ending either had to be this, or recalling that Public Execution trap from Saw 3D to finally solve this love triangle once and for all ☠ Art and Patrick rekindle their flow, and a good tennis match is all Tashi has ever wanted, so it leads to that guttural holler – another callback – which informs us that everything is going to be okay 💪
I laughed twice through this non-comedy movie – not at any joke, but at the inlayed irony of the narrative. The first is when Patrick slaps Art’s cock away, since Art is now upset that Patrick is reneging on his deal to appease Art’s grandmother 😄 Art, your own body is telling you that the stakes have changed! Ante up, brother! 😄 The second was something said outside while Patrick is asking Tashi to be his coach – it was also this scene that I realised how much I really love this movie, and I still had a third left to sit back and soak it all in. If anything, I wasn’t always a fan of the music design involving 80s synthesizers, but what the score does do is make the other musical choices pop – the ominous piano at the beach scene, or the church choir over Tashi realising her tennis career is over. I also might suggest the movie holds a twist or two too many, with Tashi sleeping with Patrick the night before – I don’t know if I needed that, and I don’t know if that scene is as strong as the rest, but it’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, and on rewatch, I might appreciate the significance more. I already can’t wait to watch this movie again, because I’m sure there’ll be more finesse to notice a second time round – I might even this back-to-back with Saltburn, as the other of two movies of recent years that have impressed me most, boasting young sexy stars set to dominate the future. Yes, I’m disappointed that I didn’t track this movie down in cinemas during its premier week, but I also find it fitting that I’m reviewing this in the final week of Wimbledon. Go… tennis! I wonder if Carlos Alcaraz or Jasmine Paolini really have this level of drama in their lives…😮
5.0
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