‘Challengers’ Review – Psychosexual Warfare On The Tennis Court

According to Tashi Duncan, the tennis prodigy played by Zendaya in Challengers, tennis is a “relationship.” Specifically, it reflects the players’ true selves. Each set is a deeply felt conversation that either makes or breaks the most genuine connection either will ever know. 

Or, at least, that is what Tashi says to set the hearts of Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) aflutter during a late-night hangout on the beach during the US Open. It’s a hopelessly romantic sentiment wielded with playful cynicism appropriate for the world of professional tennis. Tashi is well aware that Art and Patrick both want her. Her nugget of wisdom is as much about turning them on as it is about demonstrating how far above them she is. And yet, amongst the winds of blossoming youth and limitless potential, you sense that Tashi truly believes what she’s saying.

Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino believes it, too, so ardently that he frames Challengers around Tashi’s philosophy. Thirteen years after that fateful encounter, Tashi, Art, and Patrick find themselves at a low-level match before the US Open. Their relationships couldn’t be different than they were on that beach. Tashi, sidelined by a career-ending injury, is now coach and wife to Art, who’s lost his love for the sport. (Tashi’s love for him is on equally shaky ground.) Patrick is an aging, broke playboy who still has the drive but wastes opportunities. After years of mess, the fractured trio reunites for Art and Patrick’s first match since they were teenagers vying for titles and Tashi. For fans in the stands, it’s a heel-cooler before the main event.

Building Challengers around the New Rochelle match, with flashbacks dispersed throughout, gives the film a propulsive and downright sweaty energy. Guadagnino guarantees that every moment on and off the court drips with subtext from the trio’s tangled past. Patrick’s glances at Art while cooling off on the sidelines resemble how he looked at him when they were young doubles partners, with not-so-vague lust. Art’s slow start reflects his flagging confidence and disinterest in reviving it. Tashi’s stone-cold stares from the stands brim with years of resentment. She resents her privileged but stagnant life, her lingering feelings for Patrick, her frustration that she’s not on the court herself, and her disgust at being at the match in the first place. Guadagnino dresses psychosexual warfare in tennis cosplay, interrogating the noxious poly relationship between ambition, comfort, and unrealized potential.

The film slots nicely with Guadagnino’s examination of overpowering allure, from the resplendent Call Me By Your Name to the feral Bones & All. What makes Challengers novel in his canon is its conventional appeal. Guadagnino fully embraces the high-octane spirit of tennis while imbuing it with his sensual sensibility. The match sets overflow with kinetic energy. The final set is particularly fierce, as Guadagnino experiments with perspective and whip-quick editing to convey its physical and thematic weight. He supports that riotous spirit with a broad sense of humor borne from the inherent silliness of sweat-drenched hormones and massive egos. Speaking of sweat, every element, from the slow-motion drips off Art and Patrick’s faces to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ phenomenal “2 am nightclub in Berlin” score, serves the film’s sensual core. Guadagnino’s intoxicating blend of intense carnality, winking charm, and pulsating action makes for a startlingly entertaining film.

How sex and ambition make out is central to the film, but the driving characters can sometimes feel hollow. Art, Patrick, and Tashi are compelling characters with clear identities, but still feel distant despite our time with them. Patrick’s trust fund background is vital to how Tashi regards him, but we don’t understand his relationship with wealth. Similarly opaque is his sexual identity. The film hints several times at his attraction to Art, but it gets lost in their relationship’s competitive nature. Tashi’s devastating injury deeply impacts her relationships with Art and Patrick, but we get few opportunities to excavate the damage. Surprisingly, Art is the most developed character of the three. We understand where his priorities lie and how his shortcomings sicken Tashi and are exploited by Patrick.

Fortunately, the slight character work doesn’t diminish Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist’s excellent performances. Fresh off Dune: Part Two, Zendaya continues her hot streak of complex, interior-driven work. She conveys palpable seething resentment over the trio’s unrealized potential with stony gazes and tense physicality, a far cry from Tashi’s youthful fluidity. You don’t quite feel for her, but Zendaya wears the character’s chilly maturity very well. O’Connor is a delightful rake as Patrick, exuding chaotic bisexual energy with nasty smirks and bumbling awkwardness. The camera loves all three actors but loves him best, helping him to deliver one of the year’s sexiest performances. Faist is the film’s MVP and its emotional core. He realizes Art’s yearning – for a simpler life and Tashi’s love – wonderfully throughout, but his explosive on-court reaction in the final act is jaw-dropping.

Ultimately, Tashi’s insight into what tennis means comes to thrilling life. Luca Guadagnino shows that love can prevail even in the messiest of circumstances. (In this case, a sweat-drenched love triangle of hard bodies and harder heads.) Challengers wears its bruises, but the pain is worth the winning result. It is one of the year’s sexiest and most exciting films, and a new commercial high point for one of cinema’s most sensuous auteurs.

Challengers will debut exclusively in theaters on April 26, 2024, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios. 

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