Worth: $18.50
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Cast:
Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O'Connor
Intro:
…. a gloriously sensual film ...
Luca Guadagnino has a long history of making highly corporeal films: A Bigger Splash examines the nuances of fame through Tilda Swinton’s tall, beautifully draped form. Call Me by Your Name explores a blossoming romance between two young men with sun soaked, carved-from-marble bodies. Meanwhile, Suspiria depicts lithe young dancers drenched in blood and terror and Bones and All posits the process of falling in love to be a ravenous, fleshy, all-consuming one. Guadagnino’s latest film is no exception, examining the steamy love triangle that intertwines three gorgeous tennis players.
Unfolding non-chronologically, Challengers follows former best friends and doubles partners Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor), who both fell for the beautiful, prodigiously talented Tashi (Zendaya) as teenagers. It’s clear from the beginning that Tashi has all the power, with the boys playing for her phone number after their first meeting. Tennis, Tashi tells them, “is a relationship” and their ever-changing feelings for one another are constantly being played out on the court. After Tashi suffers a career destroying injury, she marries Art and becomes his coach. Thirteen years later, when the film begins, Tashi is attempting to rescue Art from an embarrassing losing streak. She enters him in a challenger tournament where the couple reunite with the now-charmingly-crumpled Patrick, and the rivalries and regrets of the past vehemently return to the fore.
Challengers is a gloriously sensual film, totally enraptured by the three bodies at its centre. The camerawork perpetually focalises the trio’s erotic appeal, replete with lingering closeups of Tashi’s long, glistening legs flexing beneath tiny tennis skirts and shots of the boys’ knees grazing as they watch her play. While the young men vie for Tashi’s attention, they share a veiled attraction for one another, too. Faist and O’Connor deftly capture their characters’ subterranean sexual tension, their exchanged smiles (especially whilst sharing bites of a phallic churro) often simmering with something more than friendship. Zendaya, though, offers a particularly fine performance. She does a superb job of concealing Tashi’s precise motivations beneath her cool, queenly gait. Who does she love? Why does she toy with the boys? To what vague extent are her actions fuelled by sadism? She never lets us know for sure.
Challengers has a ‘body,’ too, one as carefully wrought and worked-on as the bodies of the athletes it depicts. Guadagnino gives the film a flexible, rapidly developing form, morphing from a seemingly classical sports drama into a wildly inventive and exciting piece of cinema. Partway through, the director introduces increasingly frenetic camera techniques such as fast zooms, slow motion, and point-of-view shots from a flying tennis ball’s perspective. Justin Kuritzkes’ script adds another layer of ecstatic energy, full of verbal rallies that vibrate with humour and lust. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s pulsing techno score steadily infiltrates the dialogue, pumping rhythm through the film’s veins. The sound eventually becomes so heightened (the cracking of Tashi’s knee, the ball smashing against the court) that it seems detached from the screen, forming a sonic skin over the film.
While the film’s love triangle narrative is familiar, its exhilarating formal construction and stellar performances ensure it never becomes boring. Challengers is Guadagnino’s most alive, vivacious work yet, approaching age-old questions about love, jealousy and betrayal with renewed vigour and grace. It pounces back and forth in time, dipping in one direction then leaping in another. Finally, after a rousing effort, the film culminates in a thrilling, breathless crescendo that is sure to spike the heartrate of every spectator in attendance.
