‘Challengers’ – Review
Acclaimed filmmaker Luca Guadagnino brings the energy and switches things up with his striking romantic-tennis-psycho drama Challengers. This film has a hell of a pulse that will have you turned on and sweating hard with its passion that moves with absolute force.
Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a former tennis prodigy turned coach, is married to a champion on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband’s (Mike Faist) redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend (Josh O’Connor).
Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is a true force in the cinematic arts, and he’s been at the forefront of some of the hottest, steamiest, and most groundbreaking cinema releases in the last two decades. He’s also a true artist who is not afraid to try new things and push himself as a creative, and that’s exactly where he takes us with Challengers, his hard-hitting, court-smashing story of love and tennis. And it’s utterly brilliant. Telling the story of a complex, evolving and at times frayed and twisted love triangle, Guadagnino uses the energy and kinetic speed of the sports genre to explore the lives of three tennis players and their love story is packed together with tension and savagery. And if you think you know what to expect with Challengers, watch out because this film is full of surprises, twists and an ending that will leave you on the edge of your seat with your heart palpitating.
Guadagnino, with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, crafts a picture in Challengers that moves at a cracking pace and whose back-and-forth narrative keeps you guessing the whole way through. While audiences might come into this film with preconceived notions of what they think a sports film from Luca Guadagnino might be, you’ll be in for a surprise as Guadagnino keeps you guessing and builds his narrative fast. Guadagnino seeks to ground this picture in both tennis and love, and this dual theme of competition and romance adds to the film’s tempo with its back-and-forth motion. While wanting to avoid falling into spoilers, there’s considerable complexity present in this picture’s narrative, making it a riveting watch.
Zendaya is currently Hollywood’s reigning ‘it girl’, and her broad level of work has earned her a legion of fans who will all be frothing at the mouth to see her in his picture. Her performance in Challengers is something you don’t see coming. She stars as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy who suffers a career-ending injury (and it is an utterly gnarly moment to witness), and who shares a complex and, at times, warped romance with the two constant men in her life, her husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and former lover Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). This is a performance from Zendaya where she changes everything up, and via the film’s back-and-forth narrative, we find Tashi as an interesting and flawed character.
While not wanting to give too much away, Tashi is not tennis’ ‘American sweetheart’; she’s an utterly ruthless competitor whose life took a turn she could never have planned for, and that’s left her bitter, resentful, and cold. If there’s a concept that informs Tashi’s personality, then it’s definitely the idea of ‘self-interest’, and she’s got a baying narcissism that informs her actions, and she wants to ‘have her cake and eat it too’. Challengers is Zendaya’s most challenging role to date, and she pushes herself to emote in a new way that gets a reaction out of her audience. Zendaya changes things up and is working to push the envelope in a new direction with her performance and it’s absorbing to watch.
In Challengers, Tashi has two dominant male forces in her life, and one of them, Josh O’Connor’s bad boy Patrick Zweig, is more than happy to push her buttons. As a journeyman tennis player who is still competitive, but whose own faults, lack of care and demonstrable ego prevented him from reaching the top position, Patrick is a hell of a character to watch on screen. O’Connor plays him as the ultimate opportunist, almost like a jackal who is up for anything and who has no moral qualms as to what he’ll do to get what he wants. O’Connor’s performance is unpredictable in its presentation, and his erratic behaviour will keep you on edge as you never know what he’s going to do next. With a twinkle in his eye, and a smirk on his face, he changes up the game at every possible moment, and his bad-boy behaviour makes him an absolute scene stealer.
Completing our trio of characters in Challengers is Mike Faist as Art Donaldson, and while he could be said to be the ‘nice guy’ of the piece, that’s only scratching at the surface of a complex and layered character. Where Patrick is the one who never made it, Art made the step up to the big leagues, but this kind of wasn’t ‘his choice’, and let’s just say that Tashi comes first in their relationship. His character has the ‘widest arc’ throughout Challenger’s sweeping narrative, and the change from who he was to who he is will leave you speechless. Art can best be described as the lover who has become a masochist, and Faist’s performance explores some very interesting character angles throughout the picture.
Challengers is a film with many layers and subtexts in its construction, and there’s a lot going on within this narrative thematically that sweeps you up in its back-and-forth passion. However, two dominant themes in the picture, co-dependence and competition, drive the action forward. While not wanting to run too deep in a description of specific moments reacted to these themes, they do drive the story forward, and this co-dependence is a central part of the Tashi-Patrick-Art relationship. And it’s a seething, malignant co-dependence at that. Impulsive urges and morbid jealousies are frequent parts of the narrative, and the competitive spirit of our characters only heightens the intensity of the experience.
Luca Guadagnino knows a thing or two about turning the heat up on the screen (Call Me By Your Name, anyone), and Challengers continues in his ability to create sizzling moments that will have your pheromones working over time. Set across the summer season of America’s duel East and West Coast, Challengers is hot, sweaty and pulsating with sex appeal. Luca Guadagnino has a talent for turning up the volume when it comes to sensuality, and there’s plenty of heat and a good serving of tension between all three of our lead characters. Challengers is a sizzling watch, but not in the way you expect; while Guadagnino is no stranger to explicit love scenes, here, he takes a less is more approach, and it’s what’s implied rather than seen that makes Challengers all the hotter. The ambience of the summer heat and the presence of costume designer J.W. Anderson add to Challengers X factor, making for a very cool and sweaty movie.
As a cinematic experience, Challengers is a rush to witness, and Luca Guadagnino dials up the tempo and pace of the narrative, which helps to keep audiences dialled into the action both on the court and off it. Guadagnino, alongside cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, works to keep the camera moving fast, and with a goal to put the audience directly in the game that is being waged on screen, they succeed. Their innovative camera work, in combination with the whiplash editing of Marco Costa, leads to a fast-paced watch that only takes the tension of this film to a new level. Add in a palette of bright colours, the summer heat and a bubbling sensuality, and you’ve got a picture that sizzles.
Challengers is a picture that takes its audience by surprise and is undoubtedly the sexiest watch of the year. It’s vibing on a whole other level, and there’s so much complexity and depth to its narrative, in addition to its sizzling sensuality, that you can’t help but get caught up in this total grand slam of a movie experience. See it NOW!
Image: Warner Brothers Pictures
