23/04/2024 - Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya-starrer, about a three-way relationship set in the tennis world, is unarguably destined for cinema multiplexes

Advantage, service, fault, break, love (in other words, zero): the words we use in the world of tennis are equally applicable to human existence - “every match is a miniature life”, Andre Agassi explains in his autobiography-come-bible Open. Luca Guadagnino uses this obliging metaphorical approach in Challengers [+see also:
trailer
film profile] - which is due for release in Italy on 24 April and across the world in the days that follow, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures – to depict a three-way, romantic, hetero-homosexual relationship. The film follows the protagonists - by way of potentially neck-breaking flashbacks and flashforwards - through the non-places frequented by athletes: tennis courts, hotel rooms, car parks… Places where they can put themselves to the test, as the title suggests (referencing the tournaments which help players earn the points needed to gain access to the ATP Tour).

The film opens in 2019, when Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, Riff in Spielberg’s West Side Story) and Patrick Zweig (British actor Josh O’Connor, who starred in La Chimera [+see also:
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film profile] last year) are going head to head in the final of the New Rochelle Challenger, a few weeks ahead of the US Open, under the watchful eye of Art’s wife and coach Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, coming off the back of Dune 2). Donaldson, who’s won in majors six times, is trying to get back in shape for the US Open – the only Grand Slam event he hasn’t yet won – but he’s now at the end of the line and is only carrying on because of Tashi, his other half in a power couple buoyed by millionaire sponsors. Zweig is a tennis player who hasn’t had much of a career, whose credit card has reached its limit, who’s forced to sleep in his car ahead of matches, and who still hopes to make it into the main draw. The three of them have known each other for 13 years, since the time when Tashi was a hugely promising tennis player and the two boys played doubles together, getting on like a house on fire. They know one another and they like one another. In the threesome scene on the bed, which was included in the trailer and which thrilled Zendaya’s fans, the latter detects a bond between the two boys which goes over and above friendship and locker room intimacy. She says she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker”, but she promises her telephone number to whoever wins a challenge. The sexier one (as far as we can tell, O’Connor beats Faist 6-0 6-0 in the field of sensuality), Patrick, wins, a man who leads an irregular and unsettled life, devoted to solitude. A knee accident puts an end to Tashi’s career, she ends up marrying Art, and she thinks she can fulfil all of the dreams that fate has denied her through him. Art dismisses the expectations of his wife, who ends up hating him and falling back into the arms of loser Patrick in a game of attraction and repulsion.

“Tennis is a relationship” – this is Tashi’s philosophy, and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes demonstrates great skill in sketching out this manipulative young woman who loves nothing but tennis, who projects her thwarted ambitions onto her husband and who ultimately loses control of the sexy triangle (Zendaya has distanced herself from the character vis-à-vis the press and has asked people not to judge her). Kuritzkes and Guadagnino don’t drill down too deep into the three characters’ psychology. Instead, the director of Call Me By Your Name [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Luca Guadagnino
film profile] highlights the sensuality of their bodies and faces, where desire, antagonism and jealousy blend together, often accentuated by slow-motion shots of beads of sweat and by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s filming techniques which border on parody (a tennis ball as the main focus or shot from underneath the surface of the court which is made to look transparent). The techno music offered up by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross throbs powerfully in the background of the actors’ performances. Also providing US star Zendaya with a producing role, this film by Bernardo Bertolucci’s student might prove irritating for tennis purists, but it’s nonetheless imposing itself in multiplexes around the world.

Challengers is co-produced by the USA and Italy by way of Amazon MGM, Why Are You Acting?, Pascal Pictures and Frenesy Films.

(Translated from Italian)