Luca Guadagnino’s long awaited latest film, “Challengers” (2024), is finally here so run to the theaters! Tennis champion Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is at the center of a thirteen-year rivalry between former tennis doubles partners and childhood friends Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who used to be roommates at Mark Rebellat Tennis Academy. The film chronicles the twists and turns of their relationship to determine who will win?
Tashi is an iconic tennis player who leveraged her success on the court into dominating other fields like fashion, endorsements, and foundations. She turns to coaching when a knee injury stops her from playing. When she first appears on screen, her side gigs are wife to Art and mother to Lily (A.J. Lister) as their hotel suite bustles with people to take all tasks off her plate that are not related to strategy, which includes taking care of Lily and physically preparing Art for his next match. Tashi’s mother (Nada Despotovich), who is never named, gets first place in most supportive mother for barely having a line and obediently following her daughter’s lead as if she was the nanny. Every scene during the thirteenth year gives moviegoers a vicarious chance to live the life of elite champions and delivers the same sensation of touching a glossy magazine page. Tashi’s dialogue is terse, direct, and bruising. She is a coach who is trying to light a fire under her husband, who has become a champion, recently recovered from an injury, and is trying to stage a comeback with little success. Despite all her objective success, she privately struggles with her identity outside of tennis although she is not overtly sappy or emotional about it.
From their first meeting, Tashi has always believed that Art can beat Patrick, which to outsiders seems silly since Art’s image holds the same weight as Tashi’s in advertisements, and Patrick is unknown. To the public, Art appears to be a fearsome competitor who crushes his opponents, but in private, he is deeply in love with Tashi and playing as an act of devotion and sacrifice to her since she cannot do so anymore. He worries that if he quits tennis, he will lose her. While he always loved tennis and shares that language with his wife, who sees tennis as a relationship, he can love his life without it. He lacks an independent identity or a fire to achieve something for himself outside of attaining Tashi as his one true love. He is more comfortable in the shadow of more dominant personalities like his wife or rival Patrick.
Ranked 271st, the still cocky Patrick is a tennis bum and gigolo whom Tashi classifies dismissively as someone who sees tennis as a form of self-expression, which has some merit since in relationships, he always wants the upper hand, and wants things to happen on his terms instead of engaging with his partner. He is a zero-sum player. Similarly, he possesses the power to make Tashi and Art happy, but prefers to use his skills to taunt them. He seems incapable of selfless love or generosity. Unlike Tashi and Art, he does not look or win like a professional player, yet he considers himself respectively their equal and superior. He was her boyfriend first and rejected the idea that he was another adoring fan. It is underexplored, but he comes from means yet chooses to live financially insecure. His identity is independent from people or tennis, yet he is as devoted to tennis as Tashi though he carries it out in a completely different way. Like a bumblebee, he does not add up, but still somehow works.
These are not likeable characters, and they behave horribly to each other, but it is easy to get invested in them and want them all to win. As Chani in the “Dune” franchise, Zendaya already proved that she could do more with facial expressions and few lines than most people could do with wheelbarrows full of dialogue. She does it again here while looking perfect. Tashi talks tough, but perceptive people will notice her growing discomfort during the match. She is a passionate person. Faist grabbed people’s attention as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” (2021), and he is unrecognizable as the privileged, well-off, lovelorn Art. At times, he seems arrogant and indomitable then others vulnerable and childlike. O’Connor embodies undeserved, undebatable swagger. While neither man is as famous or conventionally attractive as Jacob Elordi in “Saltburn” (2023), Faist and O’Connor are undeniably sexy and go where audiences hoped the male leads in “Saltburn” would go. There is one scene where one of the men pulls the other’s stool closer with his foot. Their body language mirrors the other, and they are eager as puppies to touch each other. While Tashi acts as a wedge, like tennis, she also becomes an implied, sanctioned way for these allegedly heterosexual men to touch each other, which they lose when Tashi chooses one of them to be her significant other. The implied question running throughout the film is whether they can ever become friends or is Tashi’s choice in a partner as permanent as it appears to be.
Even though the previews give away a lot of details about the characters, experiencing the execution is electrifying. “Challengers” is a delicious, sensuous, sleek, and polished character study with a pulsing EDM score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that will put movie lovers into the characters’ high-energy, intense mindset. Eiffel Tower hopefuls can move on. It is not often that a film teases threesomes without sexual depictions or female nudity (tons of penises on display in locker rooms); however, the sexual tension between all three characters is palpable, especially between the men, which may explain why women viewers preferred the movie over male attendees.
People who were concerned that Guadagnino lost his touch after “Bones and All” (2022) can come back to theater without trepidation. The camera work is dynamic and energetic, constantly moving to show the relationship of the characters in space and contrast with other people occupying the same area. The camera pans quickly to the right to catch up with the brisk pace of Team Donaldson on the way to a match then stops and tracks alongside them to observe them. Guadagnino really conveys the electricity of each space and the silent, private communication among the threesome under public scrutiny. He takes the time to show them noticing something without making it dull. The spacing is expert with Tashi at the center of the net, across from and facing the Umpire (Darnell Appling making a meal out of a morsel and such a refreshing moment of unexpected representation) because she is also judging the competitors. Tashi is the prize who brings good luck and fortune. The tennis ball’s point of view was excessive and did not work, but the deep focus and split screens were effective ways to simultaneously depict the characters’ relationship dynamic. As the two men get engrossed in their game, it becomes less about her and more about just the two of them. It is like a duel without weapons.
“Challengers” narrative is divided into chapters like a tennis match, which will leave sports atheists intrigued but easily glossed over and ignored. Actual tennis fans seemed less enamored with the denouement and structure. Writer Justin Kuritzkes structures the scenes with flashbacks and begins to quicken the rhythm of the jumping from the past to the present to match the rhythm of the score, which highlights the intensity of the interaction whether it is a conversation or the match. Side note: Kuritzkes is the husband of Celine Song, who directed “Past Lives” about an unconsummated love triangle, which increases prurient interest in his private life.
“Challengers” latest film delivers an indulgent, messy bird’s eye view of a thropple that allows its viewers to live fabulous, gorgeous, and athletic lives that would otherwise be inaccessible. You will want to see it again as soon as it ends.
