Challengers Review: Zendaya Stuns In Luca Guadagnino’s Exhilarating Tennis Drama
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The post Challengers Review: Zendaya Stuns In Luca Guadagnino’s Exhilarating Tennis Drama appeared first on Consequence.
There’s a loudness to Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers that you might not anticipate, if you primarily associate the director with his melancholy romance Call Me By Your Name. But here, the famed director has traded Sufjan Stevens for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, delivering a propulsive, captivating, and sometimes horny story of how love and competition might not always be so different.
Things begin in 2006, when best friends Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) first meet Tashi (Zendaya) — they’re all teenage rising stars in the world of professional tennis, buzzing with the adrenaline of being young and hot and gifted. The love triangle that forms between them is instantaneous, though its shape changes as the years pass, with Tashi ultimately ending up married to Art, with a daughter and an injury that keeps her on the literal sidelines, managing his career.
While their paths cross multiple times over time, things come to a head at a 2019 “challengers” tournament. Art is playing to build up his confidence for more high-profile competitions. A down-on-his-luck Patrick is playing to keep his bank balance above zero. And Tashi’s watching for a sign as to what all of their futures hold.
Justin Kuritzkes’s nonchronological script dances nimbly around its decade-plus timeline, with title cards and Tashi’s haircut helping the audience keep track of what’s happening when; this is a film where every detail feels meticulously well-observed, a film confident enough to include a running plot thread involving a borrowed T-shirt without ever calling attention to it in the dialogue.
Also, the presence of brands in these characters’ lives plays an unspoken but particularly powerful role, a giant car billboard serving as a looming reminder of how sports and business co-mingle in these characters’ lives. Non-tennis fans may struggle to remember the rules of scoring, and the difference between a set and a match; meanwhile, tennis fans will be lapping up all the behind-the-scenes details the film presents about this life, and its costs.
Early into the film, Tashi declares that when you’re playing tennis opposite someone, it’s not a battle — it’s a conversation, a connection. And that thesis bears out not just in the intense performances on the court, but in the way Guadagnino films these matches; the ball moves so fast sometimes it’s almost blinding, and sometimes that ball is shooting right up the camera lens. Sometimes the ball is the camera. Sometimes the players are the camera, too, thanks to some inventive Go-Pro usage.
Propelling the on-court action is Reznor and Ross’s score, bringing a level of bombast to the sports action that at times threatens to overwhelm the action, without ever actually proving distracting. (And the closing credits track, “Compress / Repress,” is flat-out sick, delivering Nine Inch Nails vibes with lyrics by Guadagnino and vocals by Reznor.)
In a recent interview with GQ, Reznor and Ross said that they were asked by Guadagnino to create “very loud techno music” for the soundtrack (Sony Music has just released a nine-track remix of their score). Reznor also noted that Guadagnino’s notes for them were “all a variation” of three words: “Unending homoerotic desire.”
That… is definitely a presence. The promotional materials for Challengers make it out to be slightly more erotically charged than what we actually get on screen; there’s certainly sexual content, but it’s not as explicit as you’d expect, and it’s all very rooted in these characters and their relationships, with nothing on par with Call Me By Your Name’s “peach” moment. Still, the chemistry between all three players is electric, and Guadagnino continues to have a sure hand when it comes to guiding these scenes. And the most intimate moment of the entire film might actually be just… a hug.
It’s a dynamic made possible by the commitment of all three stars, each perfectly cast: Mike Faist continues to deliver on the promise he showed in Spielberg’s West Side Story, and his quiet determination pings perfectly off Josh O’Connor’s more rebellious energy. Their close connection (and the undeniable “homoerotic desire” that pulses between them) ensures that this is a proper three-sided love triangle, albeit a complicated one.
Meanwhile, the most impressive aspect of Zendaya’s performance is her ability to believably portray Tashi not just as an 18-year-old but as a married mother in her early 30s; Faist and O’Connor also manage a similar transformation, but neither of those actors have been playing teenagers in high-profile projects for some time now.
Wardrobe, hair, and makeup of course make a difference here, but what really sells Zendaya as the older Tashi is the resignation she brings to the character; the livable despair that comes with your lifelong dream dying before you’re 30. It’s an incredibly layered performance; the more Zendaya works with directors like Guadagnino, the better she’s going to get, and that’s exciting to contemplate.
Right to the final exhilarating moments, Challengers plays a bold game — sports action so visceral you can feel the sweat dripping off the screen, along with the emotional rallying that occurs off the court. If nothing else, the adrenaline that Guadagnino brings to the screen captures better than most sports dramas what drives athletes like this to compete at this level — and why at the end of a match, win or lose, they can’t help but scream.
Challengers serves its way into theaters on Friday, April 26th.
Challengers Review: Zendaya Stuns In Luca Guadagnino’s Exhilarating Tennis Drama
Liz Shannon Miller
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