Robert Flynn reviews Challengers; the latest sizzling sports film to spice up this summer’s cinematic line-up.
While this new energetic sports drama breaks new ground for Zendaya (Euphoria) as she embraces an adult role with full force, Challengers also marks new territory for its director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) as he enters the court with a new explosive tennis drama. However, to conflate Challengers with a movie like Moneyball (2011) or Borg vs McEnroe (2017) would be misleading. Think more of the Old Hollywood sex comedy, like The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) or even Design For Living (1933), except with an energetic auteurist twist and sexual subtext unambiguously becoming text. Guadagnino’s explorations of desire, sexuality, and love are often delicate, doomed, and steeped in an unmistakably adolescent moodiness. Instead, Challengers is forceful, sexy, and utterly compelling.
Challengers frames itself around the final game of a low-level Tennis tournament, called a “Challenger”, where former teammates, as well as former best friends, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), face off for the first time in over a decade. Each of them has enjoyed their own degree of success in the world of professional tennis, but fueling each of them in this final is the gaze of Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), Art’s wife and coach, as well as Patrick’s former girlfriend. The viewer is thrown backward and forwards in time as the history of this peculiar and competitive love triangle is revealed. As lust becomes love, friends become competitors and all the lines are blurred, with tension felt in every glance, racket smash, and a whack of the ball. Each explosive set and flashback builds up to an unforgettable match point where our threesome realises what has been missing all along.
As mentioned briefly, this adult and complex role is uncharted territory for the film's star, and standout, Zendaya. This opportunity is not taken for granted, as she embodies the role of young and promising tennis player-turned-coach Tashi Duncan. Long-held glances and looks of desire, control, and frustration are abundant in Challengers, but Zendaya’s restrained yet emotive eyes and expressions are most compelling and evocative. Tashi is assertive, transparent, and confident but secretly harbours feelings of unfulfillment and resentment towards her husband Art and ex-boyfriend Patrick. Zendaya’s performance consistently keeps the viewer guessing Tashi’s values, who she intends to pursue and where they should and should not be looking.
Mike Faist (West Side Story) and Josh O’Connor (The Crown) should not go unmentioned either. O’Connor basks in the sleaze and undeniable charm of this rundown tennis player, Patrick, while Faist shows his vulnerability as the clean-cut and picture-perfect Art, who is beginning to show signs of fatigue from all the competition.
Though some may find Guadaningo’s typically esoteric use of close-ups and his Fosse-like focus on parts of the body to be jarring, Challengers is certain to fill you up with an energy you can’t find anywhere else.
Lastly, Guadagnino’s re-teaming with composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross proves fruitful once more as they deliver a heart-pounding electronic club score that the film uses to amplify the tension and sexuality throughout. Challengers is an exhilarating and engaging exploration of tension, sexuality, and competition in relationships and looks at how all of those elements tie together as well as bounce off one another. Though some may find Guadaningo’s typically esoteric use of close-ups and his Fosse-like focus on parts of the body to be jarring, Challengers is certain to fill you up with an energy you can’t find anywhere else.