‘Challengers’ Review: Zendaya and Company Smash the Sports-Movie Mold in Luca Guadagnino’s Tennis Scorcher

Anyone who’s ever played tennis knows the game starts with love and escalates fast. In Luca Guadagnino’s hip, sexy and ridiculously overheated “Challengers,” the rivals are former doubles partners Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), best friends since the age of 12, who went their separate ways after both players fell for the same woman. Patrick got there first, but Art wound up marrying her — and their sense of competition has only intensified since.

As bunkmates at the same tennis academy, the guys must have heard this old groaner: What do you call a girl who stands between two players on a tennis court? (The answer is almost too dumb to dignify, and yet: Annette.) In Guadagnino’s erotic drama, Zendaya plays the gal in that position, seated at precisely the midpoint between Art and Patrick in their big match. The camera doesn’t turn, but her head does, swiveling with each shot. This is Tashi Duncan, a teenage tennis prodigy turned professional coach. More than a decade earlier, the two adversaries competed for her number. Now it feels like they’re playing for her heart.

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Like that clunky joke, the plot of “Challengers” might sound stale, and yet, there’s an electric spark to Guadagnino’s approach that elevates the material, rendering it fresh. Behind every high-speed volley and smashed racket courses raw emotion, resulting in the steamiest (and funniest) sports-centric love triangle since “Bull Durham.” With some romantic movies, you’d do well to pack tissues. In the case of “Challengers,” bring a towel. It’s that rare film where you’ll work up a sweat just from spectating.

“I’m no homewrecker,” Tashi teases Art and Patrick the night they meet her, 13 years earlier. Constructed like a tennis competition, Justin Kuritzkes’ screenplay ricochets back and forth through time, asking us to pivot our brains the way audiences do at the movie’s opening challenger match. (In pro tennis, challenger events are like the minor leagues, where second-tier talents prove themselves.) This one frames the film, as Tashi seems torn between her husband and his old partner.

Best known for directing 2017’s new queer classic “Call Me by Your Name,” Guadagnino knows a thing or two about homoerotic tension, and Tashi’s “homewrecker” comment reveals that she senses an unusually strong bond between the two guys. The early scenes between Art and Patrick are some of the film’s most endearing, as the gangly teenagers roll around and hang off one another like rambunctious golden retrievers. After winning, Patrick drags Art over to the girls’ match to see his latest crush.

Watching from the stands, their legs splayed indecently wide, the pair ogle Tashi as the wind whips her short skirt up in the air. None of this is accidental: not the way Jonathan Anderson (as in J.W. Anderson, switching from catwalks to costume design in his first feature credit) showcases Zendaya’s gazelle-like legs, not the way DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom frames the boys’ crotches, and certainly not the moment Patrick squeezes his pal’s leg as Tashi shows them how, at its most beautiful, the game can be an ecstatic experience.

Later that night, at an Adidas-sponsored party for Tashi, the guys take turns trying to get her number. They’re motivated by hormones. She’s more strategic (the sheer control involved in Zendaya’s performance is astonishing, transforming this would-be trophy into the one who sets the rules). “You don’t know what tennis is,” Tashi challenges Patrick, going on to explain, “It’s a relationship.” Lines like this, which spell everything out in blinking neon lights, run throughout Kuritzkes’ script. But Guadagnino’s execution is all about subtext, calibrating things such that body language speaks volumes.

The same goes for what promises to be the year’s hottest scene, back in the boys’ hotel room, as Tashi sits on the bed between the two and coaxes — or coaches — them to make out. “Challengers” is not a gay film per se, but it leaves things ambiguous enough that one could read it like Lukas Dhont’s recent “Close,” about a friendship so tight, the boys’ peers tease them for it.

Over the course of 131 minutes, “Challengers” volleys between what amounts to a romantic rematch and intimate earlier vignettes. At all times, even off-screen, Tashi remains the fulcrum. In the present, Art — whose torso shows signs of multiple surgeries — has been on a cold streak, which betrays a loss of passion for the game. Passion’s no problem for Patrick, who’s more confident in both his swing and his sexuality.

The film calls for intensely physical performances from the two male actors, who both appear wobbly and exhausted by the end. Faist (a Broadway star whom “West Side Story” introduced to moviegoers) has a relatively traditional character arc, patiently waiting his turn and evolving as the timeline progresses. O’Connor (whose smoldering turn in gay indie “God’s Own Country” got him cast on “The Crown”) comes across as animalistic and immature by comparison, as his bad-boy character refuses to grow up or give up.

The chronology of “Challengers” is more complicated than it has to be, which winds up being one of the film’s pleasures, as all involved — writer, director and cast — strive to elevate what could have been a tawdry “Twilight”-like YA romance (were it not for the casual full-frontal nudity and R rating). Instead, the result is closer to frisky European art films by Bernardo Bertolucci, François Ozon and Abdellatif Kechiche, so focused is the movie on butts, baskets and various other body parts — less lecherous than sensual as presented here.

Another filmmaker might have subtracted himself in order to foreground the story, whereas Guadagnino goes big, leading with style (and a trendy score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). In keeping with the athletic theme, he does all kinds of wild things with the camera, including a composition framed from the umpire’s perspective mid-court that zooms along the net to find Tashi in the crowd. Occasionally, she and other characters smack the fluorescent yellow balls directly at the screen, making us flinch in our seats. By the end, “Challengers” has assumed the ball’s POV — or maybe it’s the racket’s — as Guadagnino immerses audiences in the film’s climactic match.

Far from your typical sports movie, “Challengers” is less concerned with the final score than with the ever-shifting dynamic between the players. The pressure mounts and the perspiration pours, as the pair once known as “Fire and Ice” face off again. Whether audiences identify as Team Patrick or Team Art, Guadagnino pulls a risky yet inspired trick, effectively scoring the winning shot himself.

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