It’s very good that there is a sports drama, made for adults, that is doing so well in theatres at the moment. It’s even better that the film is quite good.
Luca Guadagnino is one of the most interesting directors working today. His films are all a smidge too long, his characters mostly story fuel to propel you along the narrative he’s set in his head, yet each one is impossible to look away from. His lovely queer romance, Call Me By Your Name, introduced him to American audiences on a grand scale and introduced peaches into the world of sex toy jokes. A few years later he blew me away with his remake of Suspiria, a film that on paper all sounds like a bad idea and yet on execution wound up one of my favorites from that year. He dipped into YA romance with Bones & All, a cannibal metaphor featuring two gorgeous young people fleeing across the American Midwest as they grapple with their hunger. He’s now stepped into sports drama, offering what may be his most accessible work and cementing his name for adult viewers as a guy to keep an eye on.
It does not hurt that he cast Zendaya as one of the three leads. It’s her world right now, we’re just living in it.
That is not to say that Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor are slouching here. Faist was a favorite of mine and the world’s coming out of Spielberg’s West Side Story update. His performance as Art Donaldson proves that when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, as he brings that hot-headed energy to his new role. As Patrick Zweig, O’Connor drums up quite a bit of “down on his luck” energy that feels as performative as his playing ability. Art is a good tennis player, but Patrick is a GREAT tennis player and knows it. He just can’t get over his issues.
And Zendaya? She stands at the exact middle point between these two boys. Her character, Tashi, is a once-in-a-lifetime athlete who is always irritated that no one else is as dedicated and intense as she is. It’s no wonder these two goofballs fall for her, awkwardly pursuing her together as horny young dudes that might be a bit confused as to what exactly they are feeling. Luca’s film is broken up into three major timelines, depicting them as they age from teens to twenties to early thirties. The boys are always focused on her and she is always focused on tennis.
Much has been made of the marketing of this film, which revolves around a potential threesome initiated in the trailer. Challengers is plenty sexy, though there’s little to no sex actually depicted onscreen. Luca loves his metaphors, but here he’s no longer being subtle. His cannibals could be stand-ins for addicts or closeted queer people (it IS set in Reagan’s America), but his tennis players? It all means sex. Tennis matches, the audience, when the tennis is good everyone is engaged in an erotic act as the balls are popped back and forth. Faist and O’Connor’s little grunts are even timed to make it feel like a horny back and forth, desperate and sweaty and even a little pleasurable despite the rivalry. Luca Guadagnino has always had a bit of an issue with saying the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud, but here he’s taken a megaphone upstairs to shout it from the rooftops.
That lack of subtlety could have been annoying but for the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The Nine Inch Nails boys have designed a score for this film that is so ridiculous that it elevates the entire affair from blunt to transcendent. Challengers isn’t perfect by any means, but its status is greatly elevated by the intensity of the music. Taking that “get it, the tennis is sex?” energy and making certain the audience gets it and gets it again is no easy task. The music carries similar intensity, beats, and tone whether we’re about to have sex in this car/hotel room/dorm room or we’re smackin’ balls back and forth.
While Luca has always had the proper visual energy for his films I have to admit that this one is insane. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Call Me By Your Name, Suspiria, Memoria) has shot the absolute shit out of this thing. Quiet moments are steady, romantic, and often very sad. The sports scenes? Those moments are full of frantic movement, drone shots, and tennis ball POV money shots that are so wild. Parts of this film actually remind me of Michael Bay’s Ambulance, a film that is successful for a variety of reasons but the greatest of which is that someone gave that crazy bastard a drone. Mukdeeprom is completely out of control and I love every wild bit of it.
I thoroughly enjoyed Challengers. It’s a film drenched in sweat, led by three incredible performances, that feels like a bunch of creatives got together and made it after riding the rails. It’s an absolute blast and begs to be watched in the loudest theatre you can find. Zendaya has been a rising star but it’s always been tied to someone else, whether it be Timmy in Dune (she’s the heart but those are his movies) or Tom Holland’s turn as Spidey. This? This is her movie, from start to finish. These dork boys are just along for the ride.
Challengers is currently in theatres.
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