B+Directed by Luca Guadagnino Starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Luca Guadagnino hops genres from erotic thrillers (A Bigger Splash) to coming of age (Call Me By Your Name) to horror (Suspiria, Bones and All), but he always brings a lusty romance that enchants his characters and takes over their higher brain functions til all that’s left is animalistic passion. He does the same for the sports genre in Challengers, another dense and sensual critical hit from the Italian director. With his magnetic trio of stars, Guadagnino crafts a game of musical chairs between a character who demands control, a character happy to give it up, and a character who scoffs at the idea of control in the first place. Using tennis as a backdrop, Challengers is a riotous feat of filmmaking from one of cinema’s most exciting filmmakers.
Challengers uses a fractured narrative to tell its story of professional disappointment and personal manipulation. In the present, top-tier player Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) is slumming it in a small invitational tournament on the recommendation of his wife and coach Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). Art needs a confidence boost after a string of injuries and defeats, and an out-of-the-way trophy should start him on his way back. Unbeknownst to them, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) is also competing. Zweig is introduced sleeping in his car, but before this rough state, he was Art’s best friend and doubles partner in high school. Through flashbacks that are intercut with Art and Patrick’s climactic final match, the viewer learns that they were both smitten with Tashi, then destined to be a world-beater and sports billionaire. Art followed her to college while Patrick turned pro, and when Tashi’s career is ended by a knee injury, Art is there to comfort her. Despite Art’s presence with Tashi over all the intervening years, Patrick keeps popping up in her life, with the present-day invitational being one instance of many when they’ve had short trysts, each one sworn off by Tashi as the last time.
As Challengers continues, it slowly becomes apparent that there aren’t going to be any other characters. Tashi’s mom is around in the background, as is the young daughter she has with Art (right?), but other that that, the film is lasered in on its central cast. None is more fascinating than Zendaya’s Tashi. In a movie star performance that could’ve credibly existed at any time in the last 75 years, she is shown to carry herself as an ultra-confident athlete and later radiate a level of simmering rage when she has to watch other people live her dream. There’s not a moment in the film where Tashi erupts at the unfairness of her injury, but she makes that loss into the silent burning core of her being. As Art loses his passion and interest in tennis, Zendaya makes clear how irritating that is to her with a delayed line delivery or a minute facial movement. Her life before her injury was dedicated to finding ecstasy through tennis, and now the best she can hope for is that her fading husband can transmit it to her through his play.
As Art, Faist is wholly believable as a doted-on athlete. Every calorie is counted, every chest hair is plucked. The film takes detailed care in contrasting the present version, all tailored athletic wear and perfect posture, to the past versions where he provides an anthropological case study in the bad clothes of mid-2000’s young white men. A pivotal scene takes place at an Applebee’s, and this version of Art probably thinks the potato skins are pretty good. In the time between segments, Art has been sculpted and crafted into a star by Tashi. All this contrast, both between Art and Tashi and between the old and new versions of Art, demands the question of why she would be with him at all, and the answer probably lies in Art’s certainty that she is better than him and that he will totally surrender himself to her. He submits to her as a project, and that’s good enough to hold her attention.
What gets Tashi’s interest, though, is Patrick. The kind of player who eschews the right way to do a thing in favor of the way that he likes best, Patrick is doomed by his iconoclasm to never be the star that Art becomes. He will always top out in the middle, and that kind of mediocrity provides Tashi with the knives she needs to take him apart at the joints. One of the film’s greatest pleasures is Zendaya spitting acid at O’Connor, and him taking it with impenetrable good humor. That implacability in the face of the undeniable reality of his current desperation is an irresistible combo for her, and O’Connor embodies the laconic confidence needed to pull that off. There’s a shot of him in a spa wearing only a towel that’s barely hanging on to his body, and it’s this unbelievable synthesis of actor, director, and cinematographer. It’s easy to see why Art was such good friends with him, and why Tashi keeps falling back in his orbit.
Despite its ample opportunities for physical action between the cast, Challengers withholds in every instance. Its version of eroticism is mysterious and seductive and tempting, as there’s so many shots of characters physically needing to do something while mentally knowing they shouldn’t. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross exemplifies this both in its thumping rhythm and in the way it’s used, coming on full blast mid-conversation. The film is always surprising in this way, and in how Guadagnino’s dynamic visuals turn the tennis ball into a camera or show a match from beneath the court surface. For all that, Guadagnino does tip the final 20 minutes towards the indulgent, drawing out the clever twists and reveals in ten minutes when two will do. That elongation saps the energy out of an energetic finale that is otherwise meant to send audiences bouncing out the door. Challengers gets most of the way there with its intricate love triangle, and while I’ve preferred other Guadagnino films to this one, there’s no denying his powerful forehand. B+
As Challengers continues, it slowly becomes apparent that there aren’t going to be any other characters. Tashi’s mom is around in the background, as is the young daughter she has with Art (right?), but other that that, the film is lasered in on its central cast. None is more fascinating than Zendaya’s Tashi. In a movie star performance that could’ve credibly existed at any time in the last 75 years, she is shown to carry herself as an ultra-confident athlete and later radiate a level of simmering rage when she has to watch other people live her dream. There’s not a moment in the film where Tashi erupts at the unfairness of her injury, but she makes that loss into the silent burning core of her being. As Art loses his passion and interest in tennis, Zendaya makes clear how irritating that is to her with a delayed line delivery or a minute facial movement. Her life before her injury was dedicated to finding ecstasy through tennis, and now the best she can hope for is that her fading husband can transmit it to her through his play.
As Art, Faist is wholly believable as a doted-on athlete. Every calorie is counted, every chest hair is plucked. The film takes detailed care in contrasting the present version, all tailored athletic wear and perfect posture, to the past versions where he provides an anthropological case study in the bad clothes of mid-2000’s young white men. A pivotal scene takes place at an Applebee’s, and this version of Art probably thinks the potato skins are pretty good. In the time between segments, Art has been sculpted and crafted into a star by Tashi. All this contrast, both between Art and Tashi and between the old and new versions of Art, demands the question of why she would be with him at all, and the answer probably lies in Art’s certainty that she is better than him and that he will totally surrender himself to her. He submits to her as a project, and that’s good enough to hold her attention.
What gets Tashi’s interest, though, is Patrick. The kind of player who eschews the right way to do a thing in favor of the way that he likes best, Patrick is doomed by his iconoclasm to never be the star that Art becomes. He will always top out in the middle, and that kind of mediocrity provides Tashi with the knives she needs to take him apart at the joints. One of the film’s greatest pleasures is Zendaya spitting acid at O’Connor, and him taking it with impenetrable good humor. That implacability in the face of the undeniable reality of his current desperation is an irresistible combo for her, and O’Connor embodies the laconic confidence needed to pull that off. There’s a shot of him in a spa wearing only a towel that’s barely hanging on to his body, and it’s this unbelievable synthesis of actor, director, and cinematographer. It’s easy to see why Art was such good friends with him, and why Tashi keeps falling back in his orbit.
Despite its ample opportunities for physical action between the cast, Challengers withholds in every instance. Its version of eroticism is mysterious and seductive and tempting, as there’s so many shots of characters physically needing to do something while mentally knowing they shouldn’t. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross exemplifies this both in its thumping rhythm and in the way it’s used, coming on full blast mid-conversation. The film is always surprising in this way, and in how Guadagnino’s dynamic visuals turn the tennis ball into a camera or show a match from beneath the court surface. For all that, Guadagnino does tip the final 20 minutes towards the indulgent, drawing out the clever twists and reveals in ten minutes when two will do. That elongation saps the energy out of an energetic finale that is otherwise meant to send audiences bouncing out the door. Challengers gets most of the way there with its intricate love triangle, and while I’ve preferred other Guadagnino films to this one, there’s no denying his powerful forehand. B+
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