Zendaya is the heart and soul of this brilliantly crafted film
Tennis isn’t just a game where you hit a ball with a racket, says Zendaya’s clinically single-minded Tashi Duncan, a champion whose career was cut short by an injury. It’s a relationship, she points out. Not to mention Luca Guadagnino Challengers Not that the sport has a way of invisibly stirring up the unexpected with form, confidence and the courage to go for broke.
As is usually the case in life, with Luca Guadignino ChallengersTennis is about human equations and mind games. It acts as both glue and deterrent to the threesome’s lives in a messy ménage e trois that sees the ball being hit from court to court and back without let. It makes for a fascinating film that is sensual and enjoyable without resorting to the overt ways of the title.
Challengers Guadagnino’s self-confessed “desire” can be seen as an elaboration of the trilogy – I’m Love, A Bigger Splash and Call Me by Your Name. It’s a sensitive and engrossing sports film that’s not just about a tennis rivalry building to a crescendo that aims to deliver a serve-and-volley game that produces an array of cross-court winners.
It gets almost everything right but nothing that Challengers Holds can go beyond its incredibly well-conceived and twisty ending. Backed by a hardcore techno score by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who worked with Guadagnino on 2022’s Bones and All), it’s informed with a blinding drive that counts for more than just winning a match point. It’s a whole other dimension.
The alluring drama of a broken relationship hinges on a tale of love, ambition, ego and the emptiness of obsession. Three tennis prodigies whose lives are intertwined but lead to divergent outcomes as selfishness and hatred lead them to risky turf.
One of the three, a three-time NCAA titleholder, had to stop playing tennis before he got out of his teens, one went to the pinnacle of the sport and the third plunged into obscurity after failing miserably. Chances are they are inextricably linked.
Challengers The timing of the final match of a 2019 ATP Tour tournament is set. It ends with former boarding school bunkmates Art Donaldson (Mike Feist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) watching the competition as Tashi, the former’s spouse and tennis coach, is a spectator and interested and invested observer.
Art Donaldson is a tennis star on a losing streak in the run to the US Open, a tournament he must win to complete the career Grand Slam. Tashi suggests that he enter a low-risk challenger outside of New York, at the New Rochelle Tennis Club, to get back to winning ways before the Big One eludes him.
Everything threatens to go awry when Tashi learns that Patrick, a man she and Art erased from their lives nearly a decade ago, is also in the line-up. Patrick is devastated. There is a problem with his credit card, he can’t check into the hotel. He sleeps in his car. His life and career clearly didn’t take him where he would have liked to be when he became an art partner in college events.
The story of tennis players who have known each other intimately for more than a decade is woven together with flashbacks that track the evolution of their friendship and the ravages of cheating and ugly behavior. The trio is too self-absorbed to seek sympathy. This is the biggest challenge of the film. As Tashi, Art and Patrick are willing to go to any lengths to get what they want, one thing they definitely don’t keep in mind is cuteness.
Exactly how Threesome relates is left up to the audience. Which way will our feelings for them sway? Should we root for them or hate what they say and do to each other and to themselves? Ambiguity holds the upper hand in the game that challengers play.
Playwright Justin Kuritzkes’ screenplay is so full of emotional and moral opacity that one never wants to egg on friend-foe Patrick and Art or the single-minded Tashi, who is committed to helping Art out of the doldrums. He has his work cut out for him. He will do whatever it takes not to get it.
Challengers It’s a stylish, brilliantly crafted psychodrama that puts tennis at the center and, with the help of three superbly self-aware central performances, hits the ball out of the park. O’Connor plays an absolute twerp with stunning flair. He annoys, he excites and he doesn’t pull a punch or a push from his arrogant ways. At each step the actor clicks.
Faist fleshes out Art Donaldson, a man more manipulated than manipulated, with just as much conviction. The two actors perform a duet that is full of highs. Their banter on and off the court gives the film its mesmerizing feel.
But, all things considered, it is Zendaya who is heart and soul Challengers. Her character is at one point described by Patrick as “the hottest woman I’ve ever seen”. Zendaya not only plays an irresistible seductress with impressive aplomb but also digs deep into the psyche of a woman who won’t take no for an answer.
Cinematographer Sayambhu Mukdiprom (whose credits include the Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Bunmi Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Call Me by Your Name) combines his proven ideas and depth with his ability to use the camera like an eye to bear on visuals full of contrasts. The isolated and distant spectator of the interior of the world.
the tempting part Challengers Also emerges from its fragmented timelines that reveal encounters and exchanges, both emotionally charged and instantly scarred by youth, that bring to the fore in the form of dribbles that are both illuminating and exhilarating, a fraught love triangle and the ever-changing dynamics of what alternates between them. A story in which a wedge the size of a tennis court is driven between former tennis partners.
Challengers A remarkably well-chiseled movie. It is as evocative as it is tangible.
