Challengers
Championship tennis player Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, Spielberg's "West Side Story") has been chasing the Grand Slam for years, but his wife and coach, former tennis prodigy Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya), observes his passion for the game fading. Convinced he needs a win to give him an edge in the upcoming U.S. Open, Tashi enters him in a New Rochelle tournament where second tier players usually compete. There he will find himself pitted against his former best friend, doubles partner and rival for Tashi’s heart, Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor, "La Chimera"). In both senses of the word, Art and Patrick are now “Challengers.”
Laura's Review: A-
The first produced feature screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes, the spouse of “Past Lives’” Celine Song, is a smash of a serve, a love triangle fueled by jealousy, ambition and one-upmanship. Director Luca Guadagnino ("Call Me by Your Name," "Bones and All") has stylized the hell out of his film while flirting with just who the real love match is here – is it mere coincidence that it’s the boys who held the doubles nickname of ‘Fire and Ice?’
Guadagnino lobs his action back and forth from the present to the past, 13 years earlier finding Art and Patrick two gawky, loose-limbed pups panting after Tashi, the picture of perfection on the court and off. She’s being feted by a corporate sponsor when both men make a play for her, inviting her to their room with a pathetic promise of beer, then stunned when she shows up.
Zendaya’s maturation as an actress is really on display here, not only in her convincing journey from teen to married mom, but in her confidence and control. Tashi knows she has the world by the balls, as it were, and she is in complete control over the sexual dynamics of this threesome. Stating that she ‘doesn’t want to be a homewrecker,’ Tashi invites us to consider that the closeness between Art and Patrick, who she gets to admit to a shared sexual experience, might be hiding something under the covers. When she invites first one, then the other, into a steamy, slurping kiss, she craftily removes herself, the two seemingly unawares they are making out with each other three beats too long.
After observing Patrick in the present having to sleep in his beater of a car and cadge free food before the New Rochelle Challenge, the past reveals Art as stunned when Patrick actually begins to date the superior player. When, during a game, he asks his friend if he’s slept with her, Patrick signals yes by touching the ball to his racket before serving. But there is friction between these two lovers, the more ruthlessly ambitious of the trio, and Art maneuvers himself into position with compassion, there at the right time when Tashi suffers a career killing knee injury. In the present, though, Tashi sees her husband as weakening and when Patrick displays himself at their five star hotel bar, past passions bubble up, especially after Patrick makes an irresistible professional pitch. O’Connor’s bad boy appeals with his wolfish, yet charming, grin while Faist, whose character comes across as the most decent of the threesome, traverses a more traditional upward/downward arc, at least until his final, joyously rebellious last act.
Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom ("Call Me by Your Name") and editor Marco Costa (“Bones and All”) make us believe in the stars’ tennis abilities not only with careful framing and cutting, but with powerful distractions like shooting from the ball’s point of view, a head rush of a visual experience. Guadagnino uses the New Rochelle match like a metronome, Art’s failing fortunes continuing, then beginning to turn around after his wife drops a bombshell of a pronouncement. The umpire (Darnell Appling, Zendaya's "Dune" and 'Euphoria' assistant) sits high above calling scores and violations while Tashi sits dead center aligned with the net (in an odd failing, the supposedly super wealthy wife/coach is depicted wearing the same outfit over multiple days). The propulsive electronic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ("The Social Network") feels retro yet edgy, its aggression fitting the film’s bold visual style (Their original song, ‘Compress/Repress,’ plays over closing credits).
Guadagnino spins one hell of a climax, a callback to an earlier move surprising us with another. “Challengers” may be set in the world of professional tennis, but it makes the sexual power plays among its threesome the real game.
Amazon MGM releases "Challengers" in theaters on 4/26/24.
