Challengers (review) – game, set, and match to Luca Guadagnino

Challengers arrives in cinemas nationwide from April 26.

You may have been led to believe that Challengers is the fiery erotic menage-a-trois that returns us to a long overdue sub-genre of cinema. While there’s horniness aplenty and about a gallon of sweat dripping off various parts, Challengers is not about how the fiery passions of elite athletes play out – it is about the maddening power frustration holds over us all.

Guadagnino’s tête-a-tennis drops us into the middle of a love triangle between Zendaya’s almost-pro-turned-coach Tashi Duncan, her struggling champion husband, Art Donaldson, played by star-on-the-rise Mike Faist, and her spurned lover Patrick Zweig, Josh O’Connor playing against type as the connivingly seductive spurned lover. The trio have a shared and messy history. Both Mike and Patrick have been involved with Tashi at one point, and in classic Guadagnino fashion, the boys have a little unresolved tension, too.

Everything in Challengers is constructed from a stylistic foundation. Conversations are cut together sharply, with barbs and retorts striking the camera around the college cafeterias, hotel rooms and steamy saunas. We bounce backwards and forwards through past and present like a ricocheting tennis ball, anchored by a challenger game between Art and Patrick, where our investment in the ultimate winner is titillated further and further as we untangle this net of rackets and romance.

The only thing that challenges Guadagnino’s teasing is the thumping, frenetic fluidity of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score – your blood can’t help but rush as soon as it drops in. It’s a calculated creative risk that’ll turn people on just as much as it’ll turn people off, especially during some of Challengers’ most important conversations. This is Guadagnino, Reznor and Ross’ way of plugging us into Tashi, Patrick and Art directly; when their blood rushes, so does ours, almost like a kind of sonic edging propelling us closer and closer to breaking point as we witness the relationships before us crumble.

Challengers is an erotic movie in that it understands the engine of desire is fueled as much by what we are denied as by what we can consume. Patrick and Art are ultimately frustrated by their inability to be enough for Tashi. Art is failing to perform to satisfy her vicarious lifestyle as his coach, while Patrick is a transitory reminder of her top-of-the-world dominance when not just these two boys but her whole world doted on her. Both boys are too caught up in their eternal schoolboy rivalry to realise that, ultimately, neither of them means anything to her as individuals – they are walking echoes of a past she longs to return to and a future that any athlete would fear.

You will not like Tashi, Patrick, or Art; each is manipulative, cunning, and volatile in their own way, and there will be moments where your view of each individual sinks lower than you thought it would go. O’Connor particularly delights in a more Machiavellian turn, with the hope that more villainous characters may come his way down the line. While many have cited this to be Zendaya’s greatest performance yet, it does feel slightly expected compared to Faist and O’Connor. When you’ve seen her acting array in Euphoria, Tashi feels like a step down in comparison. Perhaps that comes from Faist and O’Connor stepping up with such strong, brash personalities that generate thousands of sparks every time they clash. And yet, writer Justin Kuritzkes lights an incendiary fire within you – you cannot look away; you need to know every decision they make, every thought they have, every feeling they feel. There’s a violent chemistry that seduces you, like when someone walks into a party who you know is bad news, and yet that’s precisely why you gravitate toward them. Every insult is spat like venom, and every emotional backstab holds a twist of the knife as the frustrations of this trio bind and entwine you into Challengers’ disturbingly seductive grip.

Of course, our frustration cannot last, and there must always be a climax. Guadagnino thrusts every inch of tension to its maximum breaking point as a cataclysmic world-ending mood pervades the final moments of Art and Patrick’s challenger game, culminating in a propulsively explosive climax that leaves you writhing in your seat as all the frustration is finally released, and we witness past and present coming together. Game, set and match to Luca Guadagnino.