Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, muscular, and desperately horny challengers express desire in an old-fashioned courtly romantic style. The focus of the film is on the court – it’s a tennis film – but romance is everywhere, seeping into the erotic energy to a climax that’s hard to quell. Every match is an engagement. In the Chaucerian tradition, knights, tournaments and fair maidens are all worth fighting for. More modern is the youthful vigour of this production. Guadagnino’s cast is strong, but it is his own reinvention of the filmmaking perspective that drives the edgy energy of this production.
Tennis is a relationship. Played well, it’s the ultimate communiqué of sporting love. That’s the core philosophy of The Challenger, the beginning, middle and end of its storytelling. Mike Feist (West Side Story) and Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country) play boarding school brothers Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig. They’re a successful college doubles pair, but rather unremarkable in their own right – at least initially. The far superior player is Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, a hot newcomer poised for tournament and marketing success. Tashi triangulates the boys’ relationship, but also acts as a conduit for rejected longings between them.
The film concludes with the unfolding drama of the 2019 Challenger, the core of which runs through thirteen years of back and forth storytelling. It is only through understanding the past that the tensions of the present can be truly understood. Where the three-way conceit is simple enough, the power play is less so. There is indeed a drive for desire, but there is also a bitter undercurrent of class friction. While Art and Patrick owe their careers to a paid-for education, Zazie’s remarkable ability is entirely elitist. Moreover, it was brutally taken away from her when she was injured during a race. Later, she would brood to Art about how, given a second chance, she wouldn’t kill any children or old ladies. And then later, she’d be furious at Patrick’s disposable arrogance in taking advantage of the opportunity offered to him, “You shoot better with a pistol in your mouth.”
It’s the rough brevity of the narrative – Art and Patrick struggle with their feelings for Zazie – that gives the filmmaker the chance to make the most of the creative opportunity. For his part, Guadagnino manoeuvres his camera like a possessed director. His movements are dazzling, with perspectives ranging from top to bottom, and in one remarkable example, in the beating heart of the game. Interesting sequences capture the momentum of the viewer’s head bobbing from side to side, while others lose all sense of control, thanks to Marco Costa’s frantic editing to exciting but sickening effect. There haven’t been that many tennis films in the history of cinema, but none before this captured the power, speed and danger of the ball movement better.
In perfect synchronicity, the synth-heavy score by The Social Network’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross picks up the pace with well-chosen electronic notes and thunderous rhythms. The choral interludes may be muted at times, but the overall tempo is relentlessly and exaggeratedly jangly. While this elevation most often occurs at the peak of the game, the Challengers have some great off-field moments that are quite intimate. These include a thunderstorm rendezvous, a spin through pathetic fallacies, and an engagement at a hotel that was much different than expected.
Although there are virtually no supporting roles in the trio, The Challenger is fully up to the level promised by the trio. Feist’s Art does a good job of conveying a desperate desire for sympathy, while O’Connor’s Patrick displays an exasperating boyish charm. It is the latter who teaches the former how to masturbate and tells the story of their relationship. Ultimately, of course, the film belongs to Zendaya. Zendaya has often appeared as a screen girl, but she’s both the star and producer in this film, having led The Challenger to stardom as a talented actress who has come of age. When the film reaches its climax, Tulsi can only watch from the sidelines. Zendaya takes it in stride, lending extraordinary expression and nuance to the sequence.
