Challengers (2024)
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Tennis player turned coach Tashi has taken her husband, Art, and transformed him into a world-famous Major champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she signs him up for a "Challenger" event — close to the lowest level of pro tournament — where he finds himself standing across the net from his former best friend and Tashi's former boyfriend.
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Continuing the trend of Spider-Man love interests giving tennis films a whirl (see: Civil War's Kirsten Dunst with Wimbledon, then Poor Things' Emma Stone with Battle of the Sexes), Zendaya doesn't just make Tashi formidable and unforgettable; her portrayal, which is one of her best ever alongside Euphoria, firmly matches.
This is not the rather diffident stroke-play of Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany in the quaint, but in some ways comparable, tennis movie Wimbledon from 2004, though the gamesmanship and toxic masculinity reminded me pleasantly of Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas trying to impress Janette Scott during the famous tennis scene in the 1960 British classic School for Scoundrels.
We don’t meet these three characters at this point in their lives. The film begins years later, with a crash-zoom on Tashi, sitting in the tennis court bleachers, in an homage to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Patrick and Art play.
Instead, they take on that crunchy, echo-y sound of movie quotes swallowed up into club music, like how that George Michael track “Too Funky” spliced in a sample of “The Graduate's” Anne Bancroft purring, “Would you like me to seduce you?”Likewise, the visual style is so attention-grabbing that the cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, appears to have been told to cross off every technique: freeze-frames, slow motion, character dissolves, extreme sweat droplet closeups, riveting long takes where the acting glows.
Faces are shot in close-up with a reverence akin to Jonathan Demme, intentionally hinted at by aSomething Wild (1986) poster in the background of the movie's most romantic Applebee's-set scene.
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The steamy setup leads to a conflict that recalls 1993’s Indecent Proposal, wherein two dudes get butthurt about sharing a romantic relationship with a woman. It’s 2024. Cinematically at least, shouldn’t we be past ’90s-era sexual politics?
You can't help but wonder how big a fan Guadagnino is of Tom Twyker's 1998 classic “Run Lola Run” which also featured a similar music motif (we're guessing quite a bit), but it's such an inspired and gutsy choice you can't help but smile in how euphorically it works in the film's final act.
With a script penned by playwright Justin Kuritzkes (who also happens to be married to Past Lives writer-director Celine Song), the barbing nature of the dialogue is mirrored not only by the high-octane back and forth on the tennis court, but also the high-octane soundtrack—provided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—to match.
While this isn't a tale taken from actuality, Kuritzkes is the husband of filmmaker Celine Song, whose Oscar-nominated 2023 debut Past Lives not only leapt into another complicated love triangle but was loosely drawn from her own experiences.
Written by Justin Kuritzkes (the husband of celebrated Past Lives writer/director Celine Song), Challengers explores the complicated relationship between three young tennis players.
It should be noted that Challengers was written by playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes, who lately is best known for being the husband of Past Lives writer-director Celine Song.
His wife, Celine Song, also made her writing and directing debut in Challengers‘ more introspective and sincere threesome sibling, 2023’s Past Lives.
With an ending reminiscent of Damien Chazelle's equally exhaustive Whiplash, Challengers is a highly camp, hyper-queer exploration of decades-long rivalry.
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Continuing the trend of Spider-Man love interests giving tennis films a whirl (see: Civil War's Kirsten Dunst with Wimbledon, then Poor Things' Emma Stone with Battle of the Sexes), Zendaya doesn't just make Tashi formidable and unforgettable; her portrayal, which is one of her best ever alongside Euphoria, firmly matches.
The thing is, if I want to see a sick love triangle enacted, I’ll go for the real bar-nothing experience, like for instance, Gilda (1946). If I want to see a married couple torment each other, again, I’ll take the go-for-the-jugular version — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) is an excellent example. But these pitiful, wimpy feints and sneers and dry-humping on offer by the three main characters in Challengers is strictly for the teenage set.