As a tennis fanatic and a fan of many of Luca Guadagnino’s films, I was very much looking forward to Challengers. There are precious few extraordinary tennis movies, and I knew Guadagnino would be capable of delivering a sultry love-triangle story set in the often hermetically-sealed, high-intensity world of professional tennis. He certainly did that, although I hesitate to call the movie extraordinary. It’s a film that consistently takes two steps forward and one step back.
Guadagnino absolutely knows how to portray problematic or troubled relationships on screen with memorable style, and Challengers is no exception. However, there are a few too many times where he reaches into his style-over-substance bag. It could be argued that the film’s very structure is an example of this, although screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes likely shares some blame. We center on a decidedly non-major final between multiple major champion Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and professional disappointment Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). Art and Patrick were college-aged doubles partners and singles opponents in the US Open junior championship over a decade prior, and we frequently flash back to how they went from seemingly lifelong friends (with a dash of will-they-won’t-they undertones) to bitter enemies. Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), another college-aged phenom about to go to Stanford before turning pro, seduces them both, eventually controlling their collective headspace in the intervening years without really even meaning to. Or perhaps she did mean to?
That “perhaps” is the question the film is most interested in, and so it makes for an agreeably soapy romp. There is real drama here as well — Guadagnino and Kuritzkes capture the fierceness and pressure of the tennis scene brilliantly at points. That pressure regularly informs the campy quality of the triangle. While that’s certainly fun, the film never finds quite the right balance of believability. Much of this can be attributed to a lack of depth in the two male characters, and especially Patrick.
Some context: in the years leading up to the film’s final match, Tashi experienced a catastrophic injury which prevented her professional prospects, and she became Art’s coach and eventually, his wife. Patrick — whom Tashi was dating exclusively at the time of her injury and who was decidedly not there for her when it happened — isn’t nearly as credible a villain as the film would like us to think, even for a movie of this tone. Once Art and Tashi are more than just tennis partners, Patrick always feels like a mere interloper. Tashi’s physical attraction to him totally makes sense, but his motivations rarely do. He is beyond struggling, and Tashi is absolutely correct when she tells him he should quit on his tennis dreams for his own good. But Patrick seems to have a one-track mind, not for tennis, but for Tashi. He pursues her (and Art, at times) at his own detriment to such an outlandish degree that it strains credibility, regardless of the film’s enjoyable eccentricities.
Regardless of the Patrick problem, those eccentricities shouldn’t be ignored simply because the film is less than perfect. All three actors seem as locked-in as the stakes of their characters’ careers and love lives would suggest. Zendaya especially digs into this film’s tone in a way which sees her trademark sarcasm turn to real pathos and profundity. There’s a lovely and relatable comedic bent to much of the dialogue here as well, although the film ignores this later on and briefly teeters on self-parody. The tennis matches themselves are beautifully shot by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, with one moment in particular being truly groundbreaking for how the sport is shown in cinema. There’s pulpy tension everywhere you look, despite some glaringly odd editing choices by Marco Costa. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross wrote a fun techno score for the film, however it’s often far too loud in the sound mix, especially in a few crucial dramatic scenes.
These slight issues with these otherwise dazzling technical ingredients are the “two steps forward and one step back” qualities I referred to earlier. If you can go with them, more power to you, because there’s certainly worthy artistry and effort on display here. That artistry just doesn’t always move as fluidly as much as this particular tennis lover and movie enthusiast would like. It sometimes feels like Guadagnino nearly throws the match and then somehow miraculously finds a way back to match point. | George Napper
