'Challengers' Review: Game, Set, Love Matches

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Critic's pick

Zendaya, Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist play friends, lovers and foes on and off the tennis court in Luca Guadagnino's latest.

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transcript

'Challengers' | Anatomy of a Scene

The director Luca Guadagnino narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist.

Hello, I'm Luca Guadagnino, and I am the director and one of the producers of 'Challengers.' In this sequence, we see the two male characters of 'Challengers'— Patrick Zweig, played by Josh O'Connor, and Art Donaldson, played by Mike Faist — when they are in their early 20s. And they are very good tennis players. We meet them in Stanford, where Art is attending, while Patrick has left education to become a professional tennis player. This scene in particular depicts a moment, and evolution in their friendship that has been kind of diverted because of a third person came into their duo, which is Tashi Duncan, played by Zendaya. And what we see is basically a sort of game of rivalry sparkling between these two young boys over Tashi. But at the same time, a jealousy that ignites the relationship also. Because probably these two guys are also jealous of one another, not only of Tashi. "I think she's making me an honest man. You don't believe me?" "No, I'm just — I'm not sure how she's thinking about all of this. I don't want you to get hurt." The character of Tashi is kind of an invisible presence, but a very profound presence in the scene. "Did she say something to you?" "No. I just got the impression she's not thinking about this as a serious relationship." And I kept the shot long, because I felt that we had to stay with them to learn the grammar of their behavior, and their behavior together. And we just cut once we realize that the game of manipulation laid bare on the table by Art has been spotted by Patrick. So we cut to a sort of reverse shot, extreme close up, where Patrick hugs, in a sort of ambiguous way. And so there is a sort of constant battle between the two of them to the degree that they are fighting, but they are taking care of one another. When the sugar goes on the cheek of Patrick, Art takes it off with his hand in a very nice gesture of kindness — and very intimate, I would say. But at the same time, they are really tense. And I think it's about being jealous of one another, but at the same time wanting one another that we are trying to play out, and that Josh and Mike do in a beautiful way in the sequence.

The director Luca Guadagnino narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist.CreditCredit...Niko Tavernise/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Amazon

ChallengersNYT Critic's PickDirected by Luca GuadagninoDrama, Romance, SportR2h 11m

You can always feel the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino trying to turn you on — he's a zealous seducer. His movies are sleek divertissements about ravishing people and their often sumptuously rarefied sensibilities and worlds. I tend to like his work, even if it can be overly art-directed and feel too (excuse the verb) curated to stir the soul along with my consumer lust. I am moved when a father tenderly comforts his son in "Call Me by Your Name"; my most vivid memories of "A Bigger Splash" is its striking setting and a dress that Tilda Swinton wears.

Guadagnino's latest, "Challengers," is about a continually changing love triangle involving two besotted men and a sharp, beautiful woman with killer instincts and personal style. Largely set in the world of professional tennis, it is a fizzy, lightly sexy, enjoyable tease of a movie, and while someone suffers a bad injury and hearts get broken (or at least banged up), for the most part it's emotionally bloodless. Even so, it's a welcome break in tone and topic after Guadagnino's Grand Guignol adventures in "Suspiria," a take on a Dario Argento horror film, and "Bones and All," about two pretty cannibals hungrily and moodily adrift.

Written by the novelist and playwright Justin Kuritzkes, "Challengers" is fairly straightforward despite its self-consciously tortured narrative timeline. It tracks three tennis prodigies — friends, lovers and foes — across the years through their triumphs and defeats, some shared. When it opens, the troika's one-time brightest prospect, Tashi (Zendaya), has been retired from playing for a while and is now coaching her husband, Art (Mike Faist), a Grand Slam champ rapidly spiraling downward. In a bid to reset his prospects (he's a valuable property, for one), he enters a challenger tournament, a kind of minor-league event where lower-ranking professionals compete, including against injured higher-ranking players.

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Two sides of a love triangle: Zendaya and Josh O'Connor in "Challengers."Credit...Niko Tavernise/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Amazon

That match takes place in New Rochelle, N.Y., an easy drive from Flushing, Queens, and the home of the U.S. Open, which Art has yet to win. It's while in New Rochelle that he and Tashi dramatically reconnect with Patrick (Josh O'Connor), the errant member of their complicated three-way entanglement. A rich boy who cosplays as poor (well, at least struggling), Patrick met Art when they were children at a tennis academy. By 18, they were tight friends and perhaps something more; the movie coyly leaves just how close to your imagination, even as it fires it up. It's at that point that they met Tashi, then a fast-rocketing star.

Soon after the movie opens in 2019, it jumps to the recent past ("two weeks earlier") and then starts bouncing around back and forth in time like a ball flying over the net, with the New Rochelle match serving as the story's frame. (The 2019 date may be a nod to an epic men's final at Wimbledon that year in which, after nearly five hours, Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer.) Turning back the clock can be a cheap way to make movies appear more complex than they actually are. Here, though, as the story leaps from past to present — from when Tashi, Art and Patrick were feverishly young to when they were somewhat less young — time begins to blur, underscoring that the passing years haven't changed much.

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