A tedious edging playing like a sexy mind game for the intellectual, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers serves up a techno ménage à trois dominating its audience into a lustful climax.

Non-linear timeline pausing the buildup of the match but adding nuance to every move, look, and breath by the throuple as the final score isn’t endgame but the substance of how the game is played matters. The past is unraveled over thirteen years by three freshly faced athletes at the start of a tumultuous trek of pain, passion, and love to come from not only tennis but each other. This moment marks the rest of their intertwined livelihoods and how this small moment will lead to uproaring waves to come. Art and Patrick are boarding school best friends joined by their interest in Tennis further intensified by their love at first sight spotting Tashi Duncan. It is unclear if Tashi reciprocates the same emotions for the boys, all she wants is a great tennis match that will decide who gets her number.

Tashi Duncan is a force, all the boys and girls are swooning after her. At her young age, she is well aware of her influence on those around her, and using it into adulthood to work as a puppet master behind the scenes posts her life-changing energy. If she can’t be on the court making the moves, she can treat life like her own never-ending tennis game constantly acing her opposites like her husband Art and former lover Patrick. They outwardly wear their intentions on their faces while Tashi keeps the card close until she has to reveal making her impossible to read. Tashi is an observer, taking in all information before she smoothly pounces without leaving a trace. Zendaya is able to shine here when dialogue drops to express her thoughts and feelings through her face. She has always been a master of face movement and Challengers gives her the stage to thrive spitting venom one look at a time. 

Building out the trio is the delightful yet horny work of Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor. Two besties were ultimately divided by the sport that brought them together. Faist and Connor tackle total opposites with Faist being the more put-together, vulnerable Art who grows into a Grand Slam Champ. O’Connor plays a regressive manchild using his disorderly fashion to disrupt the rules around him as a mask for the privilege he grew up in. This is the second performance of the year where O’Connor fully taps into levels of desperation but interprets it not into a lowly beaten drifter. Instead, an overconfident washed-up tennis star who will use his slimy smirk to walk around the rules of life that tell him it’s time to quit. He knows he is a piece of trash and that powers him into sinking into an animalistic nature holding nothing back. He is using the tactics of the game to exert dominance and he revels in Art’s pain. 

Closeup shots are well utilized bringing the boys into moments where a kiss could break out keeping the pressure within the frame. The sexual energy oozes in the most platonic settings but because there is that proximity of face-to-face the real intimacy is the closeness and lack of shame for it. The spectators in the bleachers have no idea the deep-seated history between these men perfectly captured in slo-mo moist movements enhancing the myopic vortex of tennis isolating them from humanity. Tennis is the concentrated safe haven of their desire exuding all over the arena. The audience doesn’t exist, only the two players on the court.

Over the years their relationship has transformed from brothers to strangers, but when they step back on that court to face them they know every crevice of the man facing them across the net. They know how to get under the thickest layer of skin to cause a ripple. They find themselves in a thorny throuple, but their love for one another drives the dynamic of the film as it continues to crumble over time. Writer Justin Kuritzke offers so much more than just an affair, but by keeping the past constantly unfolding it expands the stakes of the future. When his written words are delivered by his cast, every syllable holds massive weight twisting the timeline. 

 It shifts back and forth like a ball being rallied across the net leaving the responsibility of each player’s action on themselves. Kuritzke crafts active watch-dropping explanations that interweave satisfyingly back to the future to add three dimensions to what could have been a flat world until the past and present finally catch up into one timeline. A major key to bridging the gap is the careful work of editor Marco Costa. Keeping the film upbeat to match the techno score while balancing leisure moments to establish relationships is quite the task. It is an origin story on top of an origin story that could easily fold into itself and sometimes does, but quickly finds a way out to deliver an extremely salivating finale.  

Tennis plays like a loop of the ball crossing the net back and forth until one opponent makes an error. It is all about finding sync and speaking an exclusive language of tennis. What breaks the constant is spotting weaknesses like a backhand or revealing through an old hand signal that you slept with your opponent’s wife the night before. Challengers move like a well-orchestrated dance set to house music signaling a sense of urgency. Pounding of the ball hitting the rackets is violently laced with hatred but knowing for some good tennis two opposing forces have to come together to put on a show for the audience in the outside world. Whether it’s tongues, balls, or bodies, this trio will go to lengths to fulfill their desire for dominance. 

Challengers tickles the crevices of the brain that are often forgotten in movies. Putting stress into the active watching to connect the quirks of each character tying back to the decade-long history they all share. By the point we are first introduced, these are all broken people missing that spark that once ignited their hunger. Cycling through the loops of the game with no real direction for purpose. There is something so sexy about figuring out the persona of these three morally complex individuals to decide whether jealousy or love is the driving force of their decisions. The connections between Patrick and Tashi, Tashi and Art, and Art and Patrick are all so starkly different, no relationship possessing the same needs and feels. Tashi sees dominance above Art, but an ability to be put in check by Patrick. With Patrick and Art, there is an obvious love that remains buried post falling out something outside of Tashi that ties them together. It is a punishing dance they all gleefully relish heightened by the ferocious game of tennis. 

Guadagnino lets his creative collaborators take full reign releasing control seen in his prior films to make it solely a perfume-esque Wimbledon bloodbath. In the few tennis films made, Challengers is unlike anything else. Not simply showing the game from an observer but placing the camera in the middle of the meddled messy action. The cinematography is pulsating, fitting the stakes of being in the midst of a rally between two opponents fighting for dominance. Like a dance more than a tennis match, the vulgarity oozes as the camera feels strapped to the ball swinging back and forth faster than the speed of light. Each smash of the ball is felt beyond the screen as anxieties have seeped through to tense up the crowd. The camera doesn’t just capture them playing it goes deeper into their obsession lead humanity. If that wasn’t disorienting enough, back it to the techno drive score of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross which is a major callback to their first scoring gig on The Social Network. The nontraditional score adds adrenaline that never lets the intensity drop off the court. It keeps the film fully breathing and alive, never passive as the game is always playing.

Building a complete pressure cooker where moves are engineered based on the player’s style, Challengers sets the tempo invading every sensual pleasure in the body until the final gasp for delightful release. 

Grade: A

Oscars Prospects:
Likely: None
Should be Considered: Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor (Josh O’Connor)

Release Date: April 26, 2024
Where to Watch: In Theaters

Jillian Chilingerian
she/her @JillianChili
Lives in LA. Loves Iced Americanos and slow burns.
Favorite Director: David Fincher
Sign: Leo