Luca Guadagnino has been a very busy man. He’s currently bouncing between a slate of projects, including an adaptation of Lord of the Flies, an HBO series written by Bret Easton Ellis, and a film based on the William S Burroughs novel Queer, starring Daniel Craig.
But first he is serving us Challengers, a dizzying ménage à trois tennis drama written by Justin Kuritzkes, a man who until now was most famous for a viral YouTube skit (entitled Potion Seller) and being married to Past Lives’ Celine Song.
Challengers is a first for many of its cast and crew. It is Kuritzkes’ first produced screenplay, Guadagnino’s first foray into directing sport (boy does he direct the hell out of it) and, though she may have been a lead in the cultural consciousness for a long time, Zendaya sees this as her first time leading a film. It is also one of the first times she’s played an adult, having been typecast into teenagehood for much of her career.
But it is Guadagnino’s lack of knowledge of tennis – Mike Faist, who plays one of the three main characters, said the director was more interested in “bodies and sweat” than the actual sport – that makes it so interesting. The film opens with two former best friends Art (Faist, who played Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway) and Patrick (The Crown’s Josh O’Connor) competing in a low-level tennis match that seems incongruously vicious. Through the course of the film, the audience comes to realise it is the most important match of their lives.
We are taken back to the pair’s youth, where they first meet rising tennis superstar Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) who has them instantly spellbound. An almost-threesome brings the trio together, only for Tashi to quickly split them apart: whoever wins their next match gets to have her number. O’Connor prevails, being the better player, but over time his luck changes, and Faist overtakes him in both tennis and Tashi’s affections. A lot happens in between, and 13 years later the trio are reunited at a seemingly inane tennis challenger.
There’s a lot of tennis, sure, but this is Guadagnino, so really the tennis is all about sex, power, and control. And they’re beautiful to watch – bodies are drenched and taut against green courts and bright blue skies. Everybody is svelte in their stylish Adidas, Uniqlo and JW Anderson get ups (Anderson also worked as costume designer on the film). Plus, the pace is kept alive by this film’s thumping score, courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
The use of this score, however, is nothing short of insane. It interrupts conversations and appears for three to five second intervals, or plays for a full minute over dialogue so loudly that you can barely hear the characters. Maybe it’s meant to denote a heartbeat or intense emotion, but it often feels like you accidentally hit play on a Spotify techno playlist while halfway through watching a film.
This is Challengers’ main fault (that being said, I will be listening to said soundtrack on repeat). Otherwise, the performances are stellar, Zendaya cements herself as a leading lady – and a perfectly believable adult woman, thanks very much casting agents – while O’Connor is spectacularly watchable dickhead.
He and Faist are disarmingly playful, and funny, too. There’s one scene with a rather unexpected erection slap (yes, you read that right) that will delight audiences worldwide. And yes, it's horny as hell. The threesome scene is spectacular, perhaps one of the best scenes of the whole film, and the final tennis crescendo is a work of art. Remember – tennis is sex and sex is tennis. Sometimes this is a little heavy-handedly pointed out to the audience, but who cares, sexy tennis!
It’s also very hectic. It feels as though Guadagnino was asked how many cameras he needed for production and he just responded “yes”. The filming of tennis matches become increasingly creative, from a glass-bottomed court to the ball actually becoming the camera, with the audience being whacked about by Faist and O’Connor for a good minute of screentime (I found it quite hard not to go “Wheeeeeeeeee!”).
Between this and the frankly bonkers use of score, Challengers might give you whiplash, but in my book, it’s a ménage a triumph.
