Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, and new movie Challengers, knows two things with certainty. As Janelle Monáe also says in her song 'Screwed': "Everything is sex, except sex, which is power." Challengers is the latest film in Guadagnino's body of work to echo that mantra, but, this time, the director goes down a different path to reach his destination, swapping cannibals and lazy Italian summers for professional tennis as the backdrop for his latest dabblings in sexual politics.
The movie is just as much about tennis as it is about the love triangle between its three key players – Tashi (Zendaya), Art (West Side Story's Mike Faist), and Patrick (The Crown's Josh O'Connor) – and it's on the tennis court rather than in the bedroom that the trio's passions and betrayals play out. Tashi is a former teen prodigy who had to abandon her dreams of playing professionally after a career-ending injury and now coaches her husband, Art. He has the career Tashi was once destined for, but a little less drive and, after a string of losses, Tashi signs him up for a low-stakes challenger match in small-town New York State. The idea is that an easy win will boost his confidence and put him on track for the US Open – that is, until he ends up across the net from Patrick, his ex-best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend.
