Zendaya manipulates men like she’s a mastermind – Challengers review

Muscular legs, taut arms, upper bodies glistening with sweat and messy hair – details that Luca Guadagnino introduces us to the latest, Challengers to his film. In the work, which exists as a genre hybrid of romantic and sports film, we can see the unfolding of a love triangle, in which tennis becomes the fourth character.

Tennis is much more than a sport: it is actually the perfect relationship metaphor. The give-and-take created by hitting the ball back and forth, the passion that the players invest in a match or the mutual attunement during a doubles match accurately model the dynamics of a (couple) relationship. And if we only see the surface of the sport, the scantily clad people who regularly moan from the enormous effort in front of the audience watching them voyeuristically, in silent silence, we can say that there is an inherent eroticism in tennis.

So it’s no coincidence that Woody Allen Match Pointyes, or a Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst starring Wimbledon – Serve here, love there after the Challengersin this sport provides the background and focal point of the story. The film is about tennis – and Tashi, Patrick and Art talk about the sport all the time – but it’s not about tennis at all, but about the relationship between the three of them. What the Italian director reinforces with the structure of the narrative.

Tennis as the fourth protagonist

THE Challengers its three acts are divided into three sets of a tennis match: we enter the final of a 20th-ranked US Open qualifier (so-called challenger), where the stakes are much higher than it seems at first. Yes, it is important who wins the match, but more importantly, the game is between two former best friends, Patrick and Art.

Their relationship has soured because of a woman, Tashi, who now follows the events of the match from the stands as Art’s coach. His position as a coach is symbolic, since, as the flashbacks reveal, Tashi guides the two boys not only on the field, but in all areas of life – regardless of their current relationship.

Patrick is considered a player with a particularly attacking style, which is similar in real life (let’s be honest: a classic fuckboy). Which role is fantastic by the way The crown to Josh O’Connor, who can convey Patrick’s whole personality with a single cheeky smile. This Mike Faist he achieves it with his puppy-dog look at Art, who is often accused of playing defensively. Not by chance: the boy tends to be placed in a subordinate position in all areas.

And Tashi is able to use the character flaws and strengths of the guys with great sense. The girl herself broke into the sport as a young tennis star, and it was taken for granted that she would be the next Serena Williams.

In addition, she is not only incredibly talented, but also beautiful – a deadly combination to stand for the teenagers Patrick and Art (who in pairs plow the opponents in such a way that they earned the nickname Fire and Ice), who were attracted (and manipulated) by her like a magnet from the first minute. Tashi is too big for the two men, just like the one who plays her To Zendaya also, who plays the game with a kind of facial expression Challengers two full hours.

The Australian doubles match

When Tashi’s career is cut in two due to a fatal injury, the tennis player can only show off his power off the court. And with this, the web of tangled relationships becomes more and more complicated, so that we end up watching a so-called “Australian doubles” match. In tennis, this is an unofficial form of game played by three players, and after each set it is changed, who stands alone and who stands in pairs in their own half of the court.

THE Challengers alliances and power relations are constantly changing in his (literal) games, and we get information about the current developments of the sets from the recollections, which are not built in a linear way at all.

Yes, we can also see the match between Patrick and Art, but each layer of the film is a smaller tennis match, of which we ourselves are the spectators (in fact, at one point, the tennis ball itself). Guadagnino illustrates this with an immeasurable amount of swerving: the camera imitates the movement of the audience as it turns its head from one side of the field to the other. The ball bounces non-stop between the three athletes, whether they are in a hotel room, on campus or on the tennis court.

Overheated games

Wherever they mingle, the sexual tension between the three of them is palpable. This time, Guadagnino presents a love triangle where all sides really come together. THE Challengers every minute is overheated, erotic, quite bi-curious, but surprisingly sexless. At the same time, we cannot classify it in the current trend of Hollywood prudery. THE Challengersthere is nothing sterilized in it: it is sweaty, dirty and scans the human body with voyeuristic pleasure. All this Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross its pulsating music also underlines it, which only makes the movie experience even more fun and sexy.

With this, the Italian director has come full circle in his career, as far as the last decade is concerned. In 2015-17, he started with sultry films such as In bright sunlight or the Call me by your name, so that it also captures the other endpoint of the scale of human feelings: after pleasure, fear. This was the Sighsthe Bones and alland in we saw a mixture of the two. Now he appeared again with a purely sensual creation, the spice of which Justin Kuritzkes given by his script.

Kuritzkes its a To Celine Song her husband who is Past livesben enchanted us with a similar love triangle last year. It could be possible that the Oscar-nominated film tells Song’s perspective (ie: a woman torn between two men), the Challengers and Kuritzke’s (ie: the boys compete for a woman who manipulates them)? If so, we would watch a film about the Song-Kuritzkes couple… preferably directed by Luca Guadagnino.