Nobody harnesses horniness quite like Luca Guadagnino. With his lavish, luxurious portrait of forbidden lust, the Tilda Swinton-starring I Am Love, Guadagnino embraced one of cinema’s most cliched symbolic sensual devices, filling the frame with come-hither shots of delectable food. But somehow, in his hands, this hackneyed metaphor feels fresh, and the film is a skin-tingling exploration of erotic tension. Then there’s Call Me By Your Name, with its scenes of peach-grappling and languid yearning, in which even the spaces between the characters are charged with longing. And Bones and All, which virtually rebrands cannibalism as a legitimate kink. But even by Guadagnino’s highly charged standards, Challengers is an absurdly sexy movie. With its power plays and exquisite cruelty, the shimmering beauty of its three leads and their tantalising interlocking desires, and the slow-motion shots of pooling sweat dripping on to the lens, the film borders on trashy at times, but it’s so much fun that it’s practically indecent.
At the very centre of the story, and providing much of the muscular energy that drives it, is a never better Zendaya. Deploying every last drop of her silky star quality, she plays Tashi, a former tennis prodigy. When we meet her, Tashi is now coaching her husband, Art (Mike Faist, channelling a thorny combination of brash entitlement and neediness), a multi-grand-slam-winning tennis champion who has hit a confidence-sapping losing streak. And it’s more than his career that hangs in the balance. The stress is compounded because Art is well aware that for his wife, losers are a massive turn-off. “I love you,” he says plaintively. “I know,” she purrs, lazily uninterested. Advantage Tashi.
