Challengers Review

Challengers is a sports romance film that sees Zendaya in the middle of a decades-long love triangle.

In 2019 two former friends play each other in the final of a tennis tournament in New Rochelle. On one side of the net is Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), a former champion looking to regain his form before the US Open, on the other is Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), a journeyman who never fulfilled his potential. As they play the players reflect on how their friendship deteriorated because of their shared interest in Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a former tennis prodigy turned tennis coach and Art’s wife.

Challengers was a film that had a lot of talent. Behind the camera was Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All, and playwright Justin Kuritzkes wrote the screenplay, whilst the main three performers are young, acclaimed stars. What this team came up with was a film packed with so much drama that it could have filled several seasons of television.

Tennis is a sport that can foster big rivalries which some films have explored in films like Borg vs. McEnroe and Battle of the Sexes. Other films have shown romantic tensions, like the Woody Allen film Match Point and the 2004 rom-com Wimbledon. Challengers aimed to cover both and combine the two.

Challengers was a layered film and sympathises for the characters can shift as the film progresses. Patrick was shown to be the more sympathetic character at the start of the film because he was living on the breadline since he couldn’t afford a hotel room and starving before the tournament. But as the film progressed that sympathy dissipated since there were tensions between him and Tashi and he was willing to do sketchy things like going on Tinder dates just so he could have one-night stands and a place to stay. Art and Tashi’s marriage was on the rocks at the beginning of the film and the pair were cold to each other but Art became sympathetic during the run time.

Challengers was filled with character drama. Tashi was seen as tennis’ next big prospect, someone who won the junior tournaments with ease and was endorsed by Adidas, but her career was cut short due to injury. Patrick was considered the better junior player since he was winning tournaments and turned pro first, but he never fulfilled his potential. These two were resentful toward Art since he had a successful career, but he was becoming dejected towards the sport. Whilst Art and Patrick were rivals, they only played before the tournament in New Rochelle.

There was also a class element at play amid this rivalry and love triangle. Art and Patrick were trained at a tennis academy and had a boarding school experience, whilst Tashi came from a more modest background. Tennis was Tashi’s ticket to a top university and a potential fortune. Patrick was living in poverty, but he didn’t have to because he came from a wealthy family, and he could go back to them anytime.

One of the selling points of Challengers was the titillation and sex appeal. The trailers highlighted the threesome between Tashi, Art, and Patrick and anyone who goes in to see Challengers for Zendaya will be satisfied. However, the film was more homoerotic than expected. The threesome scene has a homoerotic subtext when Art and Patrick tell Tashi about their sexual development, which brings back memories of Y tu mamá también, and it becomes more overt as the scene progresses. There were a lot of scenes featuring half-naked men showing off their physiques and a scene in a locker room which had a lot of todger.

The structure of Challengers was similar to the anime film The First Slam Dunk. This was due to the sporting event acting as a framing device with the main story being told in flashbacks. Challengers also played like a dark mirror to Past Lives, a romantic drama that was made by Kuritzkes’ wife. Past Lives was also about a love triangle spanning years and it was a melancholic film as it explored love and friendship. Challengers was a much more lustful film with its portrayal of relationships since it did start out as a sexual desire.

Challengers aimed to have a more populist film. The sports narrative and setting gave general audiences something to hook on to and Guadagnino and his team aimed to make the tennis sequences as exciting as possible. They made these sequences highly stylised and the cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom was clearly having a blast because of all the camera movements and fancy camera angles. I really like the rally that was shot from the ball’s point of view. The film’s popularism extended to the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and they produced something that sounded like it should have been played in a nightclub. It helped give the film a high tempo and even though Challengers had a 131-minute runtime, it did move along at a brisk pace.

Challengers was a film that was able to titillate and entertain. It offered something different in the sea of action and horror films that currently dominate the box office.