Challengers
In 2017, Luca Guadagnino made eating a peach sexy. The next year, he did the same for witchcraft via interpretive dance. Four years later, he did it again with obligate cannibalism. At this point he could make a piece of white bread on an otherwise empty plate a thing of great arousal. So how does the Freud of filmmaking keep getting away with making such horny cinema? The thing about Guadagnino’s command over sexuality is that he always entwines it with some other feeling, like the first time you experience love, or the spiritual awakening of your inner self, or the embracing of traits you can’t help. With his new film Challengers, Guadagnino explores sexuality through not-so-friendly competition and tennis, a realm with which he says he was previously unfamiliar. “I don’t know much about tennis, but I know a lot about desire,” he admits in the film’s production notes. While you don’t need to know anything about tennis going in, one thing’s for sure; you will leave Challengers knowing more about desire than you did prior. Or you’ve got a void where your genitals should be.
The film opens on two tennis players with very different lifestyles. Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) lives in a large hotel suite with his wife Tashi (Zendaya) and their child. Tashi’s Cartier bracelets and Chanel loafers indicate the pair have achieved enviable success through tennis and the partnerships it has brokered. Cutting to a declined credit card and a motel owner that won’t budge, it’s clear Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) has not. He can’t pay the motel he’s hoping to stay at until he’s collected some cash from tomorrow’s challenger match at Phil’s Tire Town Challengers, so tonight’s bed is his beat up old Honda. This hilariously titled match is befitting of its importance to each player; a shoe-in for Art to regain some confidence after a rattling defeat, and a money-maker for Patrick, perhaps to service his car. But things, as we soon find out, aren’t so cut and dry.
Art is on a losing streak and Tashi, who is also his coach, is embarrassed and resentful. Were it not for a catastrophic knee injury early in her career, she would likely be the driver in this career instead of the passenger. She’s the clear pants-wearer in this relationship, though, and Art looks to her for career guidance and personal approval. It’s a partnership that seems to be missing something and as it so happens, that something is Patrick. Tashi’s former lover and Art’s former doubles partner/childhood friend, the trio have a complicated and heated past that will come back under the microscope in Tire Town. Through a non-linear but very particularly selected sequence of events, we will discover the full extent of these connections over the span of 13 years in utterly immersive, heart-thumping fashion.
Challengers itself is a thrilling doubles match with Guadagnino at the helm and Justin Kuritzkes behind the script. Playwright, novelist, husband to Celine Song and esteemed potion seller, this is, remarkably, Kuritzkes first screenplay. While researching his tennis-loving grandfather and the Arthur Ashe Stadium (home to the U.S. Open) in Queens, he happened upon a controversial match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka in which Williams received coaching from the sidelines. This sparked a fascination with the sport and the idea of turning this “cinematic situation” into a story about two former friends turned rivals. That both Kuritzkes’ and his wife’s first films explore love triangles and their histories is fascinating. But where Past Lives is an affecting rumination on finally severing old threads for the good of all, Challengers is about embracing the spirit of competition as the glue that keeps a relationship between three people alive.
Challengers is an incredibly strong, ambitious and stylistic film – a true collaborative effort from all of the skilled hands that touched it. Guadagnino seems to intimately understand the characters and knows exactly how to capture them in a way that lets us into their inner workings. He says he doesn’t know tennis but from the confidence with which he directs these three actors to play it, you wouldn’t know it. Kuritzkes’ sizzling script is beautifully brought to life by acclaimed cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom – completely unsurprising, considering he also captured Call Me By Your Name, Suspiria and multiple of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films. And lending a pulsating, Social Network-esque atmosphere is the outstanding score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which on more than one occasion got into my toes and wouldn’t let go.
But what happens off court is only half the battle. Challengers owes a substantial amount of its success to its sublime leading trio, who mesh so well it begs the question of whether they might’ve all gotten freaky together in a past life. Leading the charge is Zendaya, who is absolutely wonderful as the morally flawed and uncompromising Tashi. Her first love will always be tennis and her second, her own amusement at pulling the strings between these two men whose relationship she gleefully claims to have ‘homewrecked’. Her on-court antics in the flashback scenes are completely believable as belonging to a professional tennis player, as is her shredded physique; those three months of training with pro-tennis player-turned-coach Brad Gilbert were clearly well spent.
Then there’s Mike Faist, whose film-stealing performance in Spielberg’s West Side Story had me eagerly anticipating our next meeting. There’s an old Hollywood look to his delicate, slightly odd face and his years of theatre work are evident in his role as Art, whose vulnerability comes from being the weakest-willed of the three but the one most yearning for love and acceptance. And closing the triangle is Josh O’Connor, whose recent turn in La Chimera made me sit up and pay attention. Patrick is the most bendable side of the three and the most enigmatic; while he seems a little ambivalent about tennis, he’s got more natural, raw talent than Art. Watching his face closely and trying to predetermine his motivations is as thrilling as the final, nail-biting match between the pair.
Guadagnino has said “The complications of a relationship fascinate me. Relationships come with control over the other, but at the end of the day, they also come with control within yourself.” Challengers is an excellent look at the fluidity of control within a relationship, especially a relationship that involves more than two people. As we hop between Art and Patrick in their tennis careers we see that neither of them are as serious about the game as Tashi was – and still is. It is mesmerising to watch a dynamic play out with the back and forth of a little yellow ball and to notice the little tells each player has that form a secret language only detectable to those on the court. Tashi describes tennis early on as “a relationship” and the boys, 18 at the time, are too smitten with her and too preoccupied with seeing who she’ll pick to take it in. Had they listened, they might’ve had a better understanding of what Tashi really wants out of life.
Okay, we’ve established that there’s some tennis and some relationship drama, but how is Challengers a horny film? There’s a bit of light tonguing, some implied sex and some sexual noises during the last match that your ears become more tuned to picking up as the rally goes on. But these do not a horny film make. The music certainly helps, as does the close framing of the characters’ faces, but Challengers’s inherent eroticism comes from the rhythm of volleying back and forth between two possibilities during a time when libidos are high and the future is still open. We don’t follow Tashi, Art and Patrick chronologically; rather, we learn the extent of their dynamic through flashbacks that seem as if they could be our own. These flashbacks function in a similar way to memories, making them seem more personal and allowing the viewer to feel as if they are accessing their own youthful pasts. Combine that with a game where the players are known to have primal outbursts and you’ve got yourself a smutty little sports tale indeed.
With Challengers, Luca Guadagnino has again delivered a piece of work that doesn’t just play for its audience but invites them in to be part of the experience. I could have easily sat through two more hours, though the film’s thrilling finale does provide the perfect end to a smashing good match.
Verdict
☆☆☆☆½
Challengers is in cinemas now, but just remember: masturbating in the cinema is frowned upon.
