Challengers is so obvious as to what it’s about, it’s refreshing.  There probably is some subtext to be found in the corners of this movie, but this heated tale of lovers who quarrel, have sex and play tennis works overtime to obscure it.  This is the first movie I’ve seen directed by Luca Guadagnino, so I have no idea as to whether his other films are similar to this one.  From what I see in this movie, he strikes me as a director who doesn’t beat around the bush.  He’s a confident filmmaker who is very direct with what he wants to accomplish.  What we see is exactly what he wants us to get.  Guadagnino’s movie doesn’t try to tug at our heart strings, earn our sympathy or ask us to think about what we see very deeply.  If we noodle over a  phrase or a look or what a particular object symbolizes, that is entirely up to us.

What Challengers lacks in full-on sexual coupling, it more than compensates for with an unapologetic randiness that drips from the screen like the sweat drips off two of the principals in the match at the end of the movie.  It’s clear from the get-go that the trio in this story, Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor), are motivated by two things:  sex and tennis.  When they’re not playing tennis, they’re keen on getting laid.  And as one key scene between Tashi and Patrick reveals, they think about tennis even when they are getting laid.  Or maybe that’s just Tashi, who wants to dominate both aspects of her life.  She becomes upset at Josh when he admits while they are “in bed” that he’s not fully prepared for an upcoming match.  Josh’s casual attitude is a huge turn-off for Tashi, and she promptly gets out of bed and breaks up with him.  I’m sure Josh was caught off guard by Tashi’s sudden and decisive rejection of him, but that’s because only thinks with his racquets…if you follow me.

Perhaps I was a bit glib in characterizing this threesome as being driven by the same things.  The boys are motivated by sex and tennis.  Tashi, however, is motivated by competition.  While she enjoys sex and has devoted her life to tennis, competition is what gets her motor revving.  In the beginning, when Art and Patrick see Tashi in a tournament, they’re immediately entranced by her supple body.   Then as they watch her demolish her opponent, they are overwhelmed by her fierce demeanor.  She screams “Come on!” after winning the match, a battle cry if there ever was one.  As the boys soon discover, Tashi is driven to win, both on the court and in the bedroom.  While they view her as a worthy conquest, she sees them as another game she intends to win.  Tashi’s interest in Art and Patrick begs the question: why is she attracted to these two particular young men?

Art and Patrick are cute, but not handsome.  While Faist and O’Connor bulked up to look like athletes, they are still nerds underneath.  As such, there’s no reason why a young woman like Tashi (a.k.a. the indelible Zendaya), would or should ever bother with these guys.  Unless there’s something in it for her.  Sure, Tashi could play the tease and lead these two dorks on and leave them hanging, but that’s not what she’s after.  Tashi sees the two longtime friends as another competition that she wants to win.  She tells Art and Patrick that she doesn’t want to be a homewrecker and drive a wedge between them, but she does exactly that.  Just like in a tennis match, she wants them to compete and reward the winner with her affection.  (Tashi affirms her position by stating that she’s not after love.)  Tashi’s plan is for the competition to be a fair and friendly one, where the victor gets to take her to bed.  As befitting her passion for tennis, the competition isn’t based on who is the best lover, but who is the best tennis player.

Tashi, the best tennis player of the trio, sees the underlying flaws in Art and Patrick’s game.  Art plays a sound game from a technical perspective, but he approaches the sport as a career choice, not because he’s passionate about it.  He’s too nice to dominate, and always finds himself a runner-up as a result.  Patrick, however, plays a power game and has no qualms with  crushing an opponent, but he’s undisciplined.  Combined, they would make an excellent tennis player.  Both can win, but neither is good enough to win it all.  They–and Tashi–know that they lack Tashi’s competitive fire.  Unfortunately, Tashi suffers a career-ending knee injury, and she’s left with few prospects as an amateur who has never won a title.  This is what leads Art and Patrick to ask her to be their coach at different times in the story.  Sure, they want to bed her, but they also want her to coach them up to her level.  This is where Tashi’s competition comes into play.

Patrick, who is fun and carefree, initially wins Tashi over.  He subsequently loses her to Art because Art is sensitive and caring.  Tashi proceeds to marry Art because he is the most likely of her suitors to win big.  Unfortunately, while Tashi can add five miles per hour to Art’s serve, she can’t teach him passion.  Art is devoted to Tashi and their daughter and works hard at his game, but a breakthrough eludes him.  This is how Patrick finds his way back in with Tashi at several points over the course of the story, which is structured as a thirteen year volley between them, with Tashi as the ball.  To be clear, neither the boys or the movie objectify Tashi.  And in all fairness, Tashi enjoys being fought over.  Competition means everything to her, and she sees it as the way that will ultimately bring out the best in both of her men.

Challengers is first and foremost a movie that seeks to rigorously engage our erogenous zones for over two hours.  While it has artistry to spare and good performances throughout, it wants its story of a love triangle of young, hormonal tennis players to arouse passions within us.  The movie is more “naughty” than overtly sexy, content to tease more and show less.  Challengers never gets anywhere close to the hot and bothered romances and thrillers of the Eighties and Nineties, but the sexuality it does depict is noteworthy for a big budget Hollywood movie released in 2024.  For those people who were made uncomfortable by Poor Things, this may come as a relief.  Is the movie safe for you to watch this with your parents (or grandparents)?  I honestly don’t care, because the whole Chastity Police approach to viewing movies bores me.  All I will say is that if the sight of Zendaya’s backside in a thong will trigger your viewing party, you have been warned.

The movie is a fun guilty pleasure, content with dazzling us with saucy performances, virtuoso camera work and a dance floor soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.  My complaints are minor ones.  The music, as good as it is, drowns out the dialog at critical moments.  The directorial flourishes, while impressive, are a bit much after a while.  15-20 minutes of “look at me!” shots could have easily been cut and the movie would have worked better.  The device of flipping back and forth in time really doesn’t add anything to the story.  As a sports movie, Challengers really doesn’t have anything profound about the sport itself or the people who play it.  It’s the equivalent of a three course meal where every course is dessert.  Thematically, it reminded me of Y tu mamá también (2001), minus all of the socio-political context.  Challengers was clearly made with the intent of stirring passions within the audience, and not engaging us with deep thoughts.  As a feast for the senses, it’s an unqualified winner.  Zendaya, who co-produced this movie, saw it as the perfect vehicle to announce her arrival as leading lady.  She’s great in this movie by any measure, confidently playing a character who is sexy, defiant and manipulative but never a villain.  She’s the object of desire throughout and fully embraces it.  Recommended.

Analysis

A few observations that occurred to me while watching Challengers.

The homosexual overtones surrounding Art and Patrick’s relationship are so overt that describing it as subtext feels disingenuous.  The movie is clear about how it intends to address something that usually would be subtext directly from the beginning, when Tashi immediately picks up queer vibes when she visits the two in their hotel room.  Art and Patrick have been very close friends from when they were in boarding school, when they shared a non-contact sexual episode.  When Tashi tricks them into kissing each other, the two are notably calm about it afterwards.  (Other movies would have had the two making gagging sounds out of “gay panic”.)  The scene where they playfully eat each other’s churros effectively symbolizes their desire for each other.  With all of this taken into consideration, the movie strongly implies that Art and Patrick would have been better off if they had admitted their love for each other and lived their lives as a gay couple.  Instead, they end up needlessly competing with each other on and off the court.  Additionally, Tashi is less a love interest than Art and Patrick fight over than a buffer through which they express their love for each other indirectly (and safely).  Given how the two boys complete each other and love Tashi, the movie makes a compelling case for them to be in a polyamorous relationship.  I have to tip my cap for Challengers having the guts to go where sports movies, as well as movies about love triangles, ever dare to go.

Is tennis the sexiest individual sport on the planet?  I’ve always suspected this as a casual observer of the game.  It’s not that the outfits worn by the players are particularly revealing, as is the case for beach volleyball.  The technology behind modern sports apparel would lead me to believe that there’s probably no reason for the men to be wearing shorts and the women tiny skirts.  Guadagnino admits as much in how he lingers on the bodies of the players.  The clothing they wear does allow us to admire enough of their physical attributes without feeling prurient about it.

The other aspect of the game that Guadagnino addresses is how much a match sometimes is  analogous to a sexual coupling.  Tennis is famous for how much grunting and screaming takes place, which sometimes sounds like the players are actually in the throes of fierce lovemaking.  In one hilarious scene, he edited an intense and strenuous match between Art and Patrick so that it is reduced to a series of primordial grunts that imply, well, you know.

Jokes aside, the movie fittingly has Tashi express the parallels between tennis and sex in almost poetic terms.  When Art and Patrick ask Tashi about the match they saw her win, in particular the epic rally before she claimed victory, she discusses the experience in a way that sounds exactly like a sexual encounter:

For about fifteen seconds there, we were actually playing tennis. And we understood each other completely. So did everyone watching. It’s like we were in love. Or like we didn’t exist. We went somewhere really beautiful together.

Of course, Tashi ultimately wins the match and upon doing so releases an orgiastic scream of “Come on!”  But the way she describes the experience leading up to that moment struck me as how one describes that moment during sex when it becomes an out of body experience.

With its emphasis on the grunts, the sweat and the desire to physically dominate one’s partner, Challengers states repeatedly how tennis is the closest any sport gets to the experience of sex, metaphorically speaking.  Which begs the question, why is this movie the first one that successfully made tennis and the people who play it look sexy?  Wimbledon tried to do the same thing twenty years ago but only managed to generate the tiniest of sparks between Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst.  Maybe now that Challengers has shown the way, it won’t be the last one to confirm that tennis is the sexiest sport there is.

Lobs

After appearing  in three Spider-Man films, two Dune movies and winning two Emmys for her acting on HBO’s Euphoria, it’s weird that Challengers is Zendaya’s first leading role in a big budget movie.  As I mentioned above, she’s great in this movie and it’s easy to see what attracted her to the role of Tashi.  It’s clearly a showcase for her from beginning to end, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  However, there’s no denying that movies about tennis, a sport that has never resulted in significant box office returns (Wimbledon, Battle of the Sexes) makes the subject matter for her coming out party a curious one.  She will end up with the highest-grossing movie about tennis, though.

Did Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross listen to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” on repeat while composing the soundtrack?

I’ve been a fan of David Bowie for a long time, but the inclusion of his “Time Will Crawl” was bizarre.  Someone involved with the production must also be a huge a fan, because there’s no way that a party set in 2000 (or later) would ever have that song playing in the background.