| Challengers (2024) | |
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Rating: 7.7/10 (33,467 votes) Director: Luca Guadagnino Writer: Justin Kuritzkes Stars: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O'Connor Runtime: 131 min Rated: R Genre: Drama, Romance, Sport Released: 26 Apr 2024 |
| Plot: Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, turned her husband into a champion. But to overcome a losing streak, he needs to face his ex-best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend. | |
Married to a tennis champion who is stuck on a losing streak, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is a former prodigy in the sport herself who now serves as his coach and books him into the low level Challenger contest to hopefully get his spirit for the game back. However, the tournament brings him up against a former best friend, and tensions run high as the pair battle it out on the court.
Luca Guadagnino’s film, drawn from a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, is less about the sport it is set within, and more about the relationships of the three leads. The film starts with the ex-friends and now rivals Patrick and Art (Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist) facing each other on the court, and it is immediately obvious that there are some tensions running high between the pair, with our suspicions being that it has something to do with Zendaya’s Tashi. The film then hops us back in time to slowly fill in the gaps, briefly returning to the present day tournament after each segment, as we see the pair’s relationship change over time, and indeed reflected in the tennis being played. This paces beautifully and builds to an enthralling, enticing, and deeply sensual closing act that had me on the edge of my seat and holding my breath, not in anticipation of who wins the tennis match, but in seeing a rivalry between old friends play out.
Guadagnino has said in interviews that he finds tennis quite boring, and I feel very much the same. I’ve never cared for the sport, and so initially hearing that this was a love story set around the world of tennis, I wasn’t that enamoured. Only Guadagnino’s name kept me interested, but still I went in with at the best moderate expectations. Two hours and 10 minutes later, when asked what I thought of the film as a colleague passed me in the corridor, I could only simply manage to say something expletive followed by “brilliant”. It absolutely floored me with the intensity of the emotional drive, the impact of the visuals, and the dynamics of the storytelling. In not caring about tennis, Guadagnino has delivered one of the best, if not the best, tennis dramas to date, and the court scenes themselves are shot with style and intenstity that has you dripping with sweat simply watching them – from shots presented from under the court, to the POV of the ball itself, no trick is missed in making this feel and look something different.
But tennis is still only being used as a kind of metaphor here, and indeed an early line in the film describes the sport as a relationship, and that is what we see play out as the two rivals battle for not the title, but for the attentions of Tashi. Tashi herself appears to be playing her own game of emotional tennis throughout, hitting her attentions back and forth between the pair. All three leads inhabit their roles with sensual grace, and whilst the film built up a reputation for being seductive and sexy on the run up to release, it is worth noting that the tennis matches themselves had a more sensual and seductive thrust to them than the off court moments did.
Challengers never drops the ball for the whole run time, and is certainly a contender for my personal top film of the year.
