A bright yellow tennis ball bounces across the movie screen as you sit down in your local theater to see the latest hit from Warner Brothers Studios, Challengers (2024). If you haven’t already heard of it, this Luca Guadagnino-directed picture has been a buzz on social media, with many sharing, commenting on, or liking videos of Zendaya looking up seductively at something seemingly alluring off screen.
It’s no surprise that the film is so anticipated when it features one of the most famous actresses in young Hollywood and two other provocative up-and-comers, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor. Faist and O’Connor both have respectable careers, yet Faist has focused primarily on working in theater (e.g., originating the role of Connor Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway). You may know Guadagnino from his previous works, Bones and All (2022), Suspiria (2018), and A Bigger Splash (2015), as well as Call Me By Your Name (2017), a movie that was met on the internet with a similar frenzied fervor. Guadagnino’s a director known for his gorgeous, simmering-hot films, and though I expected nothing different this time, I was surprised by the way he delivered.
I was lucky enough to snag some tickets to watch an advanced screening of this highly anticipated film, and I can now gaily (pun intended) say that I have seen this masterpiece on the silver screen. First, we need to discuss what happened in the movie—did it live up to expectations? Did Faist, O’Connor, and Zendaya have a threesome as we all hoped? How did they manage to make tennis an interesting sport to watch? And I will answer that with a hearty ‘yes’, a ‘sadly, no’, and a ‘read the rest of the article and you get to find out’ to those questions in order.
It opens with a look at the current lives of two thirds of the throuple: Faist’s Art Donaldson and Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan. They discuss the decline of her husband’s career due to his age. Tashi, a pro tennis star turned coach to the man she married, suggests Art enter a Challengers tennis tournament in order to make a comeback, one of the lowest forms of professional tennis playing someone can do. Begrudgingly, he goes along with it, and the two enter him into the competition.
Patrick Zweig, played by O’Connor, bargains with a cheap motel manager after his card declines. Zweig defeatedly walks to his car as a sound bridge of a podcast about conspiracy theories plays on the radio, obviously having fallen down the conservative rabbit hole after his dreams didn’t pan out. He drives to a parking lot where he stops and will subsequently sleep. As the film goes on to flashback to 13 years prior, with the boys not only winning a tennis championship as doubles partners but practically kissing on the court out of celebration, we can see the two former best friends have clearly strayed far from their shared past.
As the film continues, the audience catches a glimpse of how the two formerly close best friends came to stare at each other across the same dingy court in New Rochelle, taking a ride through the milestones of the different pairing relationships. While Patrick’s talent led to winning both a tournament and the stunning Tashi’s number, it also amounted to an abysmal career with no one to fill the role Tashi once held as she then poured her own work and dreams into someone else’s career. Tashi and the boys grow closer, and tensions rise when an injury upsets their careful balance, eventually leading to all three growing apart from each other.
One fateful night, Art and Tashi meet again after years apart and rekindle their spark, but this time they can actually do something about it. Art’s increasing success leads the couple to grow in the opposite direction of their old friend Patrick. As the gap closes between past and present, the match begins to heat up, the two neck in neck now. Tashi watches cautiously; she has something big at stake, but so do they. The ball bounces back and forth, up and down, and everywhere else on the screen, and the match and the story are reaching a climax. The sharp editing cuts back and forth between the two men on opposite sides of the court, and the steel-faced Tashi is starting to get worried. She keeps an eye on both men as the cutting gets so quick that it culminates with them all occupying the same frame, the three of them alone in this match.
But tennis isn’t tennis in this movie, as every tennis racket swung and every ball hit is depicted like a sexual act. The film ends on an interesting note: the two players reunite with a hug, reminiscent of their first flashback, 13 years earlier. Unlike his other films, sex scenes don’t permeate this one, instead opting to use the tennis matches themselves, the food, etc. as sensual acts. Every guttural grunt heard as a player swiftly hits the ball and churro munched seductively (no, this is not a euphemism) acts as a gateway to our tennis players real desires.
Off the court, Tashi can have at her boys, but on the court, Art and Patrick have to go at it. The superbly fast-paced, hyper-pop score amplifies the match’s tension as the two go head-to-head for Tashi’s attention. Similarly, Guadagnino uses a banana during a break and a seductive look from Patrick to Art in the present day to show how each character holds a myriad of emotions for each other. Patrick and Art end the movie connecting through the match, but also physically. They hug for the first time in years as Tashi is heard yelling in the background. Both men had fought for her attention and love, leaving their own relationships ruined in the wake. They connect again, realizing that they had thrown away a relationship with a person who truly cared about them as a friend (or more). Having tried for 13 years, the two simultaneously realize (due to events I cannot mention for the sake of not spoiling) that Tashi never had any unconditional love to give to either of them.
I cannot recommend this film enough. The genius that is Challengers is sure to impress the casual moviegoer to the most avid cinephile.