Tennis has always been an attractive sport, but Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” captures those ubiquitous elements of the sport and amplifies it. Its underlying sensuality immediately conveys the director’s style. The audience is already thrown into a tense moment in the very first scene when Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) compete in a local tennis tournament. 

While they are enemies now, their characters were best friends and occasionally something more, when they were competing at the Junior US Open, over 13 years ago. At that tournament, they were introduced to Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a legendary player in the making. Donaldson and Zweig were both attracted to her and pursued her together. However, she suggested that whoever won the singles match between them would get her phone number. 

Cut to the present, when she watches from the stands, her attention rapt on the ball as it oscillates back and forth between the players. She is now married to Donaldson and their teenage competition is recreated.

These rhythmic nods are a common sight in tennis matches. However, Guadagnino uses it to denote what the characters are feeling at the moment. The single tennis match serves as the throughline, tethered to the changing emotional states of the characters. 

From the beginning, the director wanted audiences to be immersed in the chaos. With the pace high and attention already taut, the plot should have fallen apart. However, the seamless transitions between the past and the present create a cohesive story. 

Using flashbacks, the director gives important context for the present. It gets tenser and tenser toward the climax as this back-and-forth fills the gaps in the plot. Playing with the timeline can get stale and confusing if it is not backed up by symbolism or visual parallels, both of which Guadagnino excels at. 

It is a different kind of Guadagnino film than what most people would expect, but there are elements that point towards his artistic vision. Fans of the director know that he likes to keep emotional intimacy high even when there isn’t a scene that explicitly alludes to that. It was evident in Oliver and Elio’s conversations in “Call Me By Your Name” and Maren’s act of sharing her father’s last words with Lee through the tape recorder in “Bones and All.” 

He also uses elements from the settings of the films to reflect that desire. There is very little explicit intimacy, generally. The weight of the scene mostly hinges on alluded intimacy. It isn’t the finish line, but the desire of the chase that Guadagnino manages to portray. 

Guadagnino has always used his movies to explore unconventional dynamics and settings to comment on the contemporary understanding of relationships and love. 

With Elio and Oliver in “Call Me By Your Name,” it was using the large age gap and the escapist design of their relationship to share a coming-of-age story where no one is the villain. 

For many obvious reasons, “Bones and All” was an experiment. He used the concept of cannibalism to draw a parallel with our deepest feelings of shame and flaws. What all of these movies brilliantly do is impart empathy to the protagonists. Halfway through, I wondered why I was rooting for two cannibals to get to their destination. 

“Challengers” uses a trite and tired trope that could have rendered the movie a glorified version of a bad teen rom-com, and yet it isn’t. In some part, tennis helps do that because it creates an actual visual triangle with Duncan at the apex, but more importantly, the sport becomes a conduit to channel their desires.

In the movie, Duncan says, “It’s a relationship,” referring to tennis. This line sets up the characters and plot so well that it resonates throughout the movie. Every push and pull, every bad decision and every broken racket is a callback, a hidden desire or a harsh truth that snaps them out of their denial. 

Add to that, the visual language of this movie is dubstep on drugs. It is fast-paced, banter-heavy and sensual. Sweat drips onto the camera, the churro scene makes Donaldson rubbing cinnamon sugar off Zweig look charged and an innocuous tennis ball placement becomes the emotional crux of the film. 

Experiencing this in the theater was a delight. Seats were pressed to their edges as the anticipation climbed exponentially toward the climax. The cheering and round of applause that followed proved just how entertaining and crowd-pleasing this movie is. 

Guadagnino knows exactly how to pair dialogue with camerawork and movement with theme. It is overtly queer and yet he did not have to dedicate more than one scene explicitly exploring that aspect of the storyline. The ease with which O’Connor and Faist interact with each other made me believe in their love story more than any other pairing involving Zendaya. 

The latter also served as a producer on the movie. Even though she is set up as the lead of the movie, her character is the mercurial element everyone wants and it is exemplified by the line, “Aren’t you everyone’s type?” Donaldson and Zweig have both shared that they are not generally attracted to the same people and that Tashi is an outlier. 

In the thick desire and tension that is suspended between Donaldson and Zweig, Duncan’s role becomes more like a mirror, or better yet, a semipermeable membrane. They use Tashi as a conduit for their attraction toward each other. It is an intelligent choice to cast Zendaya because the character doesn’t back down and needs that gravitas to validate her position between the two of them.

With her ability to play a range of qualities, going from a naive tennis legend with untapped potential to a desperate wife in search of meaning, Zendaya injected bravado and listlessness in equal measure. The cast members are incredibly well-chosen to play their parts. 

O’Connor mentions how “tennis players have talked about being very isolated on one side of the court. It’s quite a lonely profession,” which is his character, Zweig’s thematic throughline, and Zendaya called this “Codependency: The Movie,” in another interview, which is Duncan’s thematic throughline. 

Their contrarian viewpoints about aspects of the same movie hold up what the writer, Justin Kuritzkes, had penned down.  

Guadagnino is not known for films that start with a bang and close with a bang. While his previous works seep in, this one bombards. While his previous works feel nimble and billowy, this one is thick, almost syrupy with angst. Guadagnino shifting gears into more commercial filmmaking was not on the bingo card for 2024, but it does incite intrigue. What form will the idea of love take in his next film?

Header by Sofi Martinez