Weekend Watch - Challengers
Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, which opened in theaters across the U.S. this weekend. The love-triangle-tennis-movie hybrid stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor as a trio of tennis stars whose interweaving professional and personal lives culminate at a small-stakes challenger event in advance of the U.S. Open. Scripted by Justin Kuritzkes (husband of Past Lives director Celine Song and creator of the “Potion Seller” YouTube video), directed by Guadagnino, and scored by the ever-talented Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the film has received a slew of critical acclaim and decent audience reception as well. Let’s get into it.
Letter Grade: A-; for the most part this film delivers what you want it to, and it’s all executed with excellence and innovation.
Should you Watch This Film? If you’re looking for an innovative sports relationship dramedy, this’ll be right up your alley; however, if you’re looking for that debauchery-fueled sex-fest promised in the trailers or a film with clear heroes and villains, you’ll be leaving at least slightly disappointed.
Why?
Though perhaps a bit oversold in its marketing for broader audiences, Challengers delivers one of the better sports films and love triangle films in recent history. The performances from the three leads make for gripping romance, intrigue, and athletic sequences. Kuritzkes’s script provides a compelling story about the destructive forces of passion, jealousy, and insecurity. Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom create a menagerie of charged sequences in both the interpersonal moments and the tennis matches, showcasing a creativity in shot choice that continuously leaves the audience dazzled. Reznor and Ross supplement it all with a score that breathes life, energy, and urgency into every scene, elevating the whole thing while increasing the plot’s sense of urgency. The film’s only real missteps come in the form of a predictable and maybe even overdone “twist” in the third act and a focus on the character relationships more than the characters themselves in the film’s story development.
As a sports film, Challengers offers engrossing competition, compelling character drama, and a creative presentation of the sport of tennis itself, not yet seen in this way in mainstream films. It frames the game of tennis as a relationship, inextricably tying the sport portion of the film to the love triangle portion of the film, and it makes for even more intense competitions on the court and honestly one of the best climaxes and conclusions in any sports film, and certainly the best of the year so far. The ways that the camera is used in the tennis matches turns the sport into cinema, looking at each match from angles never seen before that keep the audience on edge for each serve, each volley, each point.
As a relationship film, certain aspects feel a bit more familiar than the sport aspects, but it still manages to keep everything compelling, partially due to the direction of Guadagnino and the score of Reznor and Ross and partially due to the leads’ performances and Kuritzkes’s clear understanding of unhealthy relationship dynamics. Zendaya plays young star Tashi Duncan, a promising tennis star whose career is cut short by injury after she hits a rough spot with her tennis player boyfriend Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), friend and rival of Mike Faist’s Art Donaldson who also has a huge crush on Tashi. The origins of their friendships and romantic entanglements are explored in nonlinear sequences of their interactions at youth tournaments and college before catching up to the present where Art is now a grand slam winner, coached by his wife Tashi, and where Patrick has fallen on hard times, struggling to find success as a tennis professional, seeking to qualify for the U.S. Open by winning the same challenger where Art has come to get his groove back ahead of the only grand slam that has yet eluded him. The ins and outs of Art’s development make for the most compelling portion of the film, as he goes from insecure also-ran to confident adult ready for the next phase of life while his rival and his wife remain their same childish selves, stuck in the what-ifs of the past. This lack of development for Tashi and Patrick has left some audiences less than thrilled with the film’s character development, particularly because their arcs culminate in a frustratingly predictable moment designed to lend extra weight to the film’s climax that really just reminds you just how little development they’ve had in comparison to Art. All three play their characters well, though, and the film’s conclusion in a relationship moment that highlights all three of their roles and sends each of them off on a high note certainly goes a long way in making up for the lack of attention paid to the actual characters of Patrick and Tashi.
Challengers is a sexy, if not overly sexual, take on tennis films, couched in a love triangle relationship dramedy that’s skillfully executed by everyone involved with a few knocks against it for some overdone relationship tropes and weak character development, that delivers a satisfying and innovative take on sports films and plenty of relational melodrama to keep everyone invested. It’s not necessarily everything that the trailers promised that it would be, but that makes it, honestly, a better film overall, avoiding that desire to be transgressive simply to push the bubble while pushing that bubble in different ways than expected. It’s worth the watch if you’re into cinematic innovation, complex relationship dynamics, fun sports action, and films without any singularly perfect hero.
