Guadagnino’s tennis movie is thorny, passionate, voyeuristic
In director Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, Justin Kuritzkes’s script lays out the film’s premise when up-and-coming tennis player Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) declares the sport to be a relationship. If you and your opponent are truly playing tennis, as Tashi does, you completely understand each other. “For 15 seconds,” she says of her last opponent, “it’s like we were in love.”
They weren’t the only ones. When Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) watch the match Tashi references, you can see the moment they fall in love with her. It’s an experience that connects them, drives them to be better players, and also pushes them to recognize the sexual tension in their own relationship (you’ve probably seen parts of the iconic hotel scene from the trailer).
But the drive to win over Tashi also forms cracks in their friendship, ones that seem irreparable in the film’s future timeline, where Art is a pro tennis player who’s lost his spark, and Tashi, now unable to play due to a knee injury, is his wife and coach. In an attempt to renew his confidence, she signs him up to play in a challenger tournament beneath his skill level. There, he’ll go against washed-out Patrick–Tashi’s ex and Art’s ex-best friend.
Challengers jumps back and forth between this match and previous moments in the characters’ tumultuous relationships with each other. Across the film, Patrick’s and Art’s love for one another creates tension. It drives their competitiveness, or perhaps their competitiveness drives their love. It begs the question: is sex for the sake of the sport, or is the sport for the sake of sex? The two are so intertwined in Challengers, it can be hard to tell.
In one scene, Art and Patrick are eating churros in Stanford’s cafeteria. They’re extremely close, caught somewhere between acting like brothers and lovers. And when Patrick catches Art in trying to undermine his current relationship with Tashi, he’s not angry, as we might expect. He’s proud of the fire lit under his friend. Their jealous rivalry over Tashi keeps the competitive spark in their relationship alive. Patrick hugs Art; Art then brushes the sugar off Patrick’s cheek. To end the intimate scenario, they each share one last bite from the same churro, and discard the last. It’s a beautiful scene flawlessly performed by O’Connor and Faist, and one that I think foreshadows their final match.
It’s the tennis matches–Patrick’s and Art’s final one in particular–that are the sexiest of all. I’m not talking about O’Connor’s pointedly suggestive eating of a banana, or the grunts and moans we hear each time the opponents return the ball. This would all be hilarious overkill, for sure, if Guadagnino did not expertly stage these matches to feel like voyeuristic sex. They are so private, so intense, that Tashi’s earnest “tennis is a relationship” makes more and more sense as the final match goes on. Ours is the experience of an outside spectactor–we can’t look away, as awkward as we may feel.
For a few moments, we’re thrust into the tennis ball’s chaotic perspective, the loss of control right before climax. And a breathtaking climax it is, helped significantly by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ raucous, stakes-raising score. Though taking somewhat too long to get to that spectacular ending, Challengers is a thorny, passionate experience from start to finish. Sports movies have never been sexier.
Read More: Challengers Ending Explained
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Verdict - 9/10
9/10