From Jeremy Kibler

Hearts and a lot of tennis rackets get destroyed in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. Whether it’s about an Italian summer romance, a witchy dance company in Germany, or two on-the-road cannibals in love, Guadagnino’s films have always captured a sensuality that can be felt and makes one feel alive. Now, for his most mainstream film set in the elite world of pro tennis, it’s an enticing, sensuously sweaty, and stylistically showy drama for grown-ups. It may be about a love triangle, but the real love is for tennis. 

Challengers tracks the history between two best friends and doubles partner, WASPy Art Donaldson (Mike Faust) and brashly charming Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), and driven tennis phenom Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). At just 18, Tashi had the world at her feet, and she turned the heads of both Art and Patrick. A late-night encounter in the boys’ hotel room would change everything, even though she jokes that she doesn’t want to be a home-wrecker. While studying at Stanford, Tashi’s career came to a standstill with a severe knee injury (her “only skill in life was hitting a ball with a racket”). While Tashi was dating Patrick at the time, Art was actually there for her during her recovery. Now, in the film’s “present”—2019 in New Rochelle, New York—she is the wife, coach, and manager to Art, a Grand Slam champion, living in hotels with their daughter. Scheduled to play in a low-stakes qualifying Challenger tournament to get his game right ahead of the U.S. Open, Art finds himself competing against former best friend Patrick, who’s struggling as a tennis player and living out of his car. They all need each other, or maybe Tashi doesn’t need either man anymore.

The script by first-time writer Justin Kuritzkes (husband to Past Lives writer-director Celine Song) is bitingly smart, playful, and surprisingly funny. The way in which Kuritzkes constructs this deceptively straightforward story of messy sexual entanglements, however, is with a non-linear structure, which feels like a hat on a hat. It isn’t hard to figure out where we are in time, but the device makes things needlessly complicated, volleying thirteen years earlier and then some. Without any greater insight made from different character perspectives, the purpose of the time-jumping beyond the past informing the present seems far less clear. 

Already a household name beyond her Disney Kid roots, Zendaya confirms her multifaceted talent with her commanding work as the unapologetic Tashi Duncan. An absolute force, she’s riveting to watch in every frame with a cool, calculating demeanor and just a few flashes of warmth when she puts her daughter to bed or needs to get what she wants. As it goes, Tashi remains the most fascinating character of the trio, puppeteering these two men at different points in her life and not wanting the world to forget her or paint her as just Art’s wife and coach. 

Zendaya is dynamite, but Mike Faist (West Side Story) and Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country) should not be minimized; they’re excellent. Faist would seem to have the most stoic role, but he has to make Art an earnest golden boy who tries not to crack, and O’Connor gets to be a little more slippery as the more desperate, down-on-his-luck Patrick. Whether it’s a twosome or a threesome (not even in a sexual sense), all three actors share palpable chemistry with each other. While this is very much a three-person show, Guadagnino still allows for one-scene supporting parts, like a motel front-desk clerk or a tennis official, to make lived-in impressions.

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s mesmeric cinematography immerses us in unexpected ways both on and off the court; the camera particularly loves eating up all three actors. The score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross is like a cool dance party of trance and techno music pulsating over even the simplest dialogue scenes. It’s a choice that’s so unexpected and just works, giving the film a propulsive energy. Marco Costa’s editing is tight as a drum, clicking with the movement of bodies on the court and even making Tashi’s knee injury in action that much more visceral. 

But while Challengers is exciting on the surface and substantive with style, it does feel a wee bit cagey and glossy for a film hinging on relationships, even devious ones. The people involved become closer to pieces on a chess board than people we actually understand. Underneath the dazzling technical bravado and three expertly modulated performances, there’s a bit of a hollow center. At some point, it feels like the soapier plot machinations of the script are just moving Tashi, Art, and Patrick around to hit their marks rather than have characters make organic decisions or power plays. The film still entertains and moves like a rocket, but it is hard to root for anyone, even if that means rooting against them. 

For a good long while, Challengers bewitches and exhilarates. Guadagnino is clearly having a blast with his camera (and maybe getting a little indulgent), and he pulls enough emotional honesty from his trio of actors to make the stirring final shot hit with a primal scream. The final match itself that the film has been moving toward all along is like a roller coaster. The tension is breathless and almost excruciating in slow motion, and you better believe there are ridiculously thrilling POV shots from the Wilson balls themselves. Sex can be hot in movies, but tennis has never looked sexier or more cinematic. 

Rating: 3.5/5

Challengers hits theaters on April 26, 2024.

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