Challengers

At the time of printing, Challengers has been out in cinemas for six weeks, and has inspired many a superlative headline in online reviews, and caused cinephiles all across the Internet to lose their collective minds. This is in large part due to its main trio being depicted on screen, under Luca Guadagnino’s direction, as the ultimate manifestations of sexuality. Like many movies nowadays, Challengers banked on showing this in its trailers to garner interest ahead of its release. Unlike many movies nowadays, it proceeds to not deliver at all on the consequent expectation of on-screen intercourse during its 131 minute runtime. Not that you miss it: the tennis matches shown in the movie, what with their edge-of-your-seat rallies and occasional indulgence in racquet abuse, fill this vacancy well enough.

The movie opens with the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger final, between down-on-his-luck maverick Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who is living paycheck-to-paycheck, and international tennis sensation Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), who has entered the competition to revitalise his career following a succession of losses at higher level events. Throughout the match we see a series of flashbacks revealing the past deep-rooted friendship between the pair, as well as their relationship with Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya), former star of the tennis world and now Art’s head coach and wife.

The movie is ostensibly about Art and Patrick, and the match between them, which is shown throughout, acting almost as a trip through the archives of their friendship. The two are torn apart by jealousy, leading them on diametrically opposing career paths until fate reunites them in New Rochelle. However, the more emotionally-charged story is undoubtedly Tashi’s. Once the cynosure on the court (and apparently on the dance floor too), hailed as the ‘tennis champion of tomorrow’, a knee injury brutally cuts her down before she has the chance to go professional, forcing her to settle for coaching instead.  This is especially crushing given Tashi’s view of tennis matches as intimate relationships between players. After her one-sided takedown of Anna Mueller, she remarks sentimentally, “We understood each other completely… It was like we were in love.” Tennis is more than simply a passion or a job – it is an obsession for her.

It is therefore easy to get the impression that she is living vicariously through Art; his wins are her wins, his losses are her losses, his chance to stop his career’s freefall is hers too. A chance for which – resentful of her husband’s lack of zeal – she emphatically says, “I would’ve killed to have … I literally would fucking stab someone [for it].” Yet to go so far as to call her entirely egotistical would be a mistake. Tashi had shown great interest in the pair since their days as the doubles team ‘Fire and Ice’. She recognises Art’s latent potential despite it being obscured by Patrick’s showy unorthodoxy, even suggesting to Patrick that he should be intimidated by the former.

But, while the characterisations in Challengers are undoubtedly strong, there is no getting around the main reason I find the protagonists so riveting: their actors, the trifecta of Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor. Very much aware of their visual impact, and especially their sheer sexuality, Guadagnino supplements his leading cast with deliberate costume design, lighting, and posturing throughout to emphasise their presence on the screen. All this adds up to a film which – without so much as full-frontal nudity outside of a locker room – manages to stimulate more lust and feel more sensual than most other R-rated movies with obligatory explicit sex scenes. Restraint is king.

Moreover, the way the trio’s acting plays off each other is appreciable, – when one is not too busy ogling their trimmed figures. The restrained expression of Faist and O’Connor offers space for Zendaya’s dynamism: a comical look of incredulity as Patrick asks for her coaching; thinly-veiled frustration at Art’s plans to retire; and the roar of overflowing ecstasy as she wins game, set, and match against Mueller.

In a sense, Challengers is oftentimes its own inverse. Marketed as erotic yet doesn’t follow through; has some of the best depictions of tennis in cinema despite not really being about tennis; and takes the ménage-à-trois romance trope and returns an anti-romance. Compared to its peers from bigger studios and well-established franchises, it’s no blockbuster – but it is a damn good movie.