OUT NOW: Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024)

Following a career-ending injury, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) has put all her passion into the career of her husband, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist).

Now in an emotional and professional downturn, Art is on the way out of the sport - and his marriage.

In a last effort to boost his confidence, Tashi enters him into a Challengers tournament.

This puts the pair on a collision course with Art’s former friend and playing partner, and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor).

I need to watch more Luca Guadagnino movies. 

I have seen a couple of his more recent movies, but I think there is something missing that I cannot articulate.

This is the most I have enjoyed and been plugged into one of his movies.

Previously, I left his movies frustrated. With this movie, I left elated, energised.

I wanted to think over the characters and their dynamics.

Maybe it is the genre element, the spicy  high concept.

This is a movie about two men who love each other, but cannot consummate their attraction. They are both separated by and united by their attraction to Zendaya’s tennis star.

I do not like watching movies for the first time thinking about alternative castings but Zendaya jostles as Tashi.

She works in the flashbacks, particularly in the sequences where she first meets O’Connor and Faist.

 

But in the present sequences, something never clicked.

There is a moment towards the end of the movie where Josh O’Connor calls her a MILF and it was the first time I realised she was meant to be in her thirties.

That was when it really clicked. Zendaya is a striking presence, but the character is demanding a sense of history and contradiction that, try as she might, Zendaya cannot.

She is too but together, and too sardonic, to be a fully developed third of the triangle.

I had a bit of trouble with figuring out Zendaya and Faust’s relationship. She is so confident and controlled, while Faist is such a sad sack, I could not pull together where this bond came from.

Tashi ends up as a catalyst for the men, probably more than the filmmakers intended.

Josh O’Connor is good as the swaggering burnout. In terms of sexual charisma he is the most magnetic of the trio, with a knowing glint - he may play an obtuse meathead, but O’Connor brings a nihilistic self-awareness. He has been on this path so long, and cannot give it up.

Mike Faist was a highlight of West Side Story. Despite his baby face there is an inherent sadness to him that fits the character .

What is fascinating about the movie is that Tashi’s infatuation with the pair is as a pair.

She loves them as a complete being, a tennis Voltron whose combined personality can match her.

The flashback structure is a little overwrought. I found it slightly confusing, but I would be keen to see how it played in a rewatch.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver a terrific score that manages to convey the sexual tension that the movie needs. 

I want to give the movie more thought. Consider this part one, for something more in-depth, at some point in the undetermined future.

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