Challengers: Review
By Sioph W. Leal
Challengers promised to be a sexy love triangle with a power struggle and a competition that takes place on and off the court, and it delivered. Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is a former prodigy turned coach after a career-ending injury in her youth who now runs her husband, Art's (Mike Faist) career. He is on a losing streak and doesn’t seem to want to win, while his former best friend and her ex-Patrick (Josh O’Connor) are back on the scene to face off against each other. While Challengers meets that promise in the first act, overly stylized experimentation takes away from an otherwise seductive movie that is about a power struggle and how competition never ends.
Everything in Challengers is meant to encapsulate the struggles of relationships, be it with each other or with the thing you are supposed to love and want. While Tashi is married to Art, she desires tennis more than anything else and the adoration that comes with her success. Art is struggling with wanting to win, lacking any desire for anything, and seems lost, which makes the supposed power couple struggle and have a disdain for shadowing them in their marriage and business, which fuels the present-day moments. On paper, Patrick is everything that Tashi desires. He is a natural talent for tennis and matches her wit and sharp tongue effortlessly, but their divide starts when he, unlike Art, has no love for the game and refuses to be her fan over her partner. Art is tired of competing, be it for his career or his wife’s affections, and somewhere in the middle, Tashi is there. Just like the romantic entanglements of the movie, tennis can be both a perfect fit and terrible for a person, and it’s explored through the non-linear moments of Challengers.
The non-linear structure works exceptionally well, creating a well-rounded dynamic for the cast of characters, with their different stages of their careers being a perfect parallel to the final moments of the movie. Starting with Art and Patrick at a challenger final, both try to prove something to one another, as Tashi watches from the sidelines. As her focus shifts from her husband to Patrick, lingering as he serves, Art can only watch. This difficult dynamic is explored further by going back to the character’s earlier years. During their first meeting, Tashi explains to the men that tennis is like a relationship, and this is heightened further as the older they get, the more complicated and physically gruelling the game seems to be.
One of the biggest promotional tools that Challengers used was sex appeal, and director Luca Guadagnino truly leans into that, more so in the last set of the tennis match between Art and Patrick. After a silent, perfectly executed revelation by Patrick, all three characters become embroiled in the unspoken tension. Art is literally dripping in sweat, while Patrick gives his signature cocky, self-assured smirk, and Tashi, for the first time in the movie, sits uncomfortably on the sidelines, unable to get in between the two men. It’s probably one of the best scenes in the entire movie. Despite the injuries we see Tashi suffer, she was never powerless until this moment, which furthers the tense final scenes and culminates in a passion that she has lacked since she was a player in the game.
Fans of Guadagnino know that he can execute sexy scenes, as evidenced by his past movies, but the actual intimate scenes fall epically flat. Throughout the movie, viewers are teased into the salaciousness of a love triangle, but just when something could happen, the camera either cuts away or Tashi does one of her many walks away. The movie was marketed to be steamy and sexy, and while this is true between the two male leads, overall, Challengers is a movie based on frustration, be it romantic, sexual, or career-driven. The heat between Patrick and Art is felt perfectly through the screen, but mostly through their physical closeness in their youth and natural ease with each other. Tashi, on the other hand, is at her best when she is serving sharp words paired with a glaringly indifferent look.
Challengers is an enjoyable movie, but there are times when viewers are taken out of the movie. The script is intriguing, but one of the main issues is that it asks viewers to care about tennis and the love triangle equally. This could work had it not been for the experimental camera work (which happens more frequently in the later parts of the movie) and music that almost drowns out key moments, proving to be more of a hindrance than anything, which is a shame as it waters down the excellent performances of Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. In some ways, the experimental camera works well when it's not overused. During the final match, it has first-person perspectives and shots from the tennis ball’s point of view that work well at the end to show the intensity and commitment needed with every serve, especially when compared to the more typical camera work that resonates with a calm and predictability used in the past when the characters are friendlier to each other. The present day's intense and erratic camera uplifts the urgency and desire from all angles and characters. However, it doesn’t work when the camera is going back and forth like a tennis ball during normal conversation mixed in with strange music choices and odd point-of-view shots that feel mismatched to the film and the scenes.
Zendaya is, of course, a huge talent and the star power behind this movie; she draws your eye in every scene not just because of her beauty but because she looks as if she is giving everything to the role and able to manage her character and the different stages of her life expertly. However, in the present timeline of Challengers, she becomes lost in the background of the two male leads as her character struggles to have a reason for being there, and focus seems to naturally shift to the dynamic of Art and Patrick.
Art’s and Patrick’s dynamic and chemistry are enthralling, with the only downside that it is toeing the line of having something romantically intimate happen between the two throughout the years only to have that plot fall away in favour of another plot to drop like a brief, seemingly thrown-in storyline in Atlanta.
All three leads can draw you in, playing off their chemistry with each other and the clashing personalities of the characters. Josh O’Connor gives a typically great performance as the naturally talented tennis player who is down on his luck but still has the talent but none of the drive. This is matched with Mike Faist’s hard-working but despondent champion trying to get a win. As great as O’Connor and Zendaya are, Faist portrays a myriad of emotions throughout Art’s life and career that could typically be boring and robotic, but he adds layers with nuanced choices that make the characters return to passion all the more impactful.
Challengers is a non-linear ride bursting with an inferno of chemistry between every iteration of the three leads. If you don’t know anything about tennis or simply don’t care for it, you will still enjoy the movie and be drawn into the drama off and on the court. Although not as physically steamy as the tailers promised, the tension and competition create iconic moments and make for an interesting ride.
‘Challengers’ is in cinemas 26 April.