By: Edu Kenedi and Lila Anderson
Edited By: Alexandra Huggins
This week, your two humble critics are in search of a third to form the final side of our triangle. We watched the hotly anticipated Challengers, a film that follows three tennis players, Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist), and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) as they navigate their messy relationship on and off the tennis court. Ultimately, the experience left one of us satisfied and one of us wanting something more.
Edu’s Take: Is it ok if I didn’t enjoy this as much…?
Challengers left me slightly confused and unsure about my feelings. The technical aspects and story of the film were great, as were the three stars’ performances, and yet I think the slightly one-dimensional characters left me wanting more.
The filmmaking and craft that director Luca Guadagnino displays in Challengers stands out as world class. The creative tennis shots are beautiful, particularly when the camera takes the point of view of the racket and tennis ball. The director also has an eye for shooting his three stars; I never knew that thighs in tennis shorts could be shot so sensually. Another technical aspect that stands out is the booming techno-synth score that repeats in key scenes, evoking emotions better than the dialogue, which almost fades into the background. The film is also well edited, with breakneck cuts of tennis matches that feel like action scenes. The expert cutting also helps, as, despite the constant flashbacks and time jumps to three distinct periods, I never felt lost in where we were. This back and forth also works well to reflect the structural nature of a tennis rally. While the flashbacks didn’t distract me, I found the overall framing device of the final tennis match between our two male protagonists a little clunky, especially as it increasingly telegraphed where the movie was going. That being said, the final rally between the two, when, in Tashi’s words they were ‘truly alive’, was riveting and its three-way climax was the perfect way to end the movie. Guadagnino also showed off his amazing eye for details, nailing the luxury aesthetic of the tennis world, especially Tashi’s iconic sliders, tennis dress, and jewellery, which Zendaya pulls off effortlessly.
I enjoyed the story for what it is, a tangled back and forth between our three protagonists that left little room for other characters. I was riveted by the sexy, sweaty, and messy performances. While Zendaya’s Tashi has certainly cemented her as a major movie star, I was most enthralled by O’Connors’ Patrick. His sleazy dirtbag energy was perfectly matched by his charming witness, contrasting well with Faist’s Art who was quieter, more easily manipulated, but not without his own mean-streak. I enjoyed their characterisation as two almost archetypal visions of masculinity that constantly vie for Tashi’s attention. My major gripe and the thing that kept me from loving Challengers was that all three characters were slightly one-dimensional. Tashi came across as rather shallow, egotistical, and conceited, but so did Art and Patrick. My issue here is not with the fact that none of these people were heroes, but rather that there was no character that really drew me into the story. I always felt like a third (or I guess fourth) wheel that was just watching.
Lila’s Take: Wait, you didn’t have a good time…?
Throughout its heavy memeing and marketing to my demographic (late 20’s woman using Twitter), Challengers intrigued me greatly. I had to wonder how a movie recounting a tennis love triangle could go on for two hours. With all the stylish setting and styled set up, what space was there going to be left for the plot? The answer, it turned out, is that the action in this sports movie played out mostly on the courts of emotion.
Maybe my colleague insists on his coolness to the film just because he feels the supply of challengers for Zendaya’s heart rising and his own hopes dwindling. I’m not sure how a movie about two sweaty, messy haired prepsters vying for a pissed-off looking tennis prodigy could do anything but do it for him.
Challengers does not represent the first time that the inner lives of gifted youth tennis players has been used as a device for exploring broader themes. The film brings to mind the cloistered exoticism of the lives of student-players at Enfield Tennis Academy, effortless in their elitism (or in simply being better than you), from everyone’s favourite doorstopper novel Infinite Jest. Our movie continues to nod to this other cerebral American coming of age classic in the sense that it’s a work with a lot of tennis that manages to feel like it’s not really about the sport.
In any case, I could not have named a more heart pounding film. The score played a significant role in that – it set the ménage-à-trois melodrama of the film to intense beats that elevated the movie into an action-packed sweatfest of vicious serves and deadly volleys. The same can be said for the sound design of the movie, where the thwacking of rackets on balls, anxious texting sounds, collision of hands with muscular thighs, and teeth on churros created a deliciously tactile experience.
In terms of the characters, the movie veers slightly into “why her” territory with Zendaya’s Tashi. Although the frustrated tennis star, tragically injured just as her career is taking off, serves “strong female lead,” her allure seems to derive from her intensity and her good looks. While these goods explain the two boys’ slack jawed awe at first, it’s hard to understand why her manipulative allure continues to enchant them, especially as the threesome’s lives cease to run parallel. The fact that they let Tashi preserve them as perpetually whipped teens over a decade is a choice (theirs).
As for Zendaya’s motives, the push and pull of the two boys is easier to understand, between a roguish taker and a sweet giver. Beyond that, she is a woman who loves the sense of power and treating two guys like marionettes.
Hate the game, not the players.