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Guadagnino come to prominence worldwide with his 2017 film Call Me By Your Name with Timothee Chalamet and Arnie Hammer. For a film that deals with the relationship between two young men in 1980’s Italy, Guadagnino explored themes of suppressed sexuality in a coming of age story in a very nuanced way–quite the accomplishment when the film has an infamous scene involving a peach. Call Me By Your Name was both a critical and audience hit, the film won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards and elevated Guadagnino’s career overnight. He quickly followed up with Suspiria (2018) and Bones and All (2022). While I never saw Suspiria, I was a little letdown with Bones and All, a movie about two young cannibalistic lovers on the run. When Luca Guadagnino revealed his next film to be Challengers, a movie about a love triangle involving tennis athletes–I was pretty indifferent. My experiences with tennis pretty much start and end with Mario Tennis. I’ve never watched a full match in my life. As someone who loves watching and playing golf, I realize that I should not be on a high horse and call tennis boring. Yet, I just cannot for the life of me get into it.

My lack of love for tennis aside, Challengers is a hell of a movie and one of the best movies of the year.

Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) are best friends that have known one another since boarding school. Both compete at the 2006 U.S. Open and win the doubles Junior championship. As exciting a moment this should be, their focus quickly shifts to another player competing at the tournament: young phenom Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). When the opportunity arises to meet her at one of Tashi’s fundraising events, it begins a long chain of competition between Patrick and Art over who will win her affection. It’s a narrative that spans over thirteen years between 2006 and 2019. The film starts off in 2019, when we discover that Patrick is now a washed up tennis pro struggling to keep relevancy. Art is one the top players in the world who is one win away from a Career Grand Slam. Oh, and he is married to Tashi. Gulp. But Art’s current game is a struggle. Even with Tashi as his coach, he seems to be losing every single match. With the U.S. Open coming up (the only Grand Slam tournament he hasn’t won), Tashi suggests that he compete in a lower tiered event as a wild card challenger. As you can probably guess, it’s a tournament that happens to be where Patrick is competing too. They both meet in the final as the woman they both love, Tashi, sits in the middle of the stands and watches both compete.

It’s everything that happens in between that works wonderfully. We know how these three met and we know where they all are in 2019, but what exactly happened in those thirteen years? The film consistently jumps between the past and the present and examines the relationship between these three characters intensely. This is a rivalry between Art and Patrick, with Tashi being at the very center of it. Both are obsessed with the idea of being with her and a once strong bond between two best friends sours. The final match in 2019 between Art and Patrick aptly serves as the narrative structure for the entire movie. The final match consists of three sets, with each set representing an act in the movie. Without spoiling anything, I thought it was an incredibly clever narrative device to pair actions and results of the present day final with the past. Tennis is a game in which one person essentially has control, being the server and putting their opponent on the defensive. It mirrors the relationship each man has with Tashi. If in one set Art or Patrick has the upper hand, the film juxtaposes it with how they won Tashi over in the past.

But much like Guadagnino’s previous films, there’s an emotional depth to all three of these individuals.

Tashi’s love for the game of tennis triumphs love for any one individual–she even laments to both that all she really wants “is to watch some fucking good tennis”. She believes that the best tennis can be achieved when two people are innately connected with one another. For her, tennis isn’t just a game, but an extension of relationships formed in real life. It makes her the puppet master between both Art and Patrick. They may think they have control of the situation, but when both bend over backwards to please her, it’s very apparent who wields it.

Patrick is a washed up pro who teeters on the edge of irrelevancy, another victim of sports ultimate grim reaper: old age. Believing he can achieve one last great run, he struggles to come to terms that his best days may be behind him. Apparently living in his car wasn’t a big enough hint. He becomes desperation personified, shamelessly doing anything to buy himself a lifeline. While being a player one and off the court, Patrick’s sexuality isn’t so clear cut. Attraction to Tashi aside, its clear that he has an attraction to men as well.

Art is seemingly the nice guy, but his actions really say otherwise. More shrewd in his approach, he meticulously plants seeds of doubt in Tashi and Patrick’s heads while they are dating. He’s the kind of guy who will put his hand on your shoulder and tell you everything is going to be all right, but his other hand is driving a knife right into your back. It’s also clear he loves tennis the least out of all three of them. It’s an emotion that’s especially cruel to Tashi and Patrick, who would do anything to have Art’s success.

I think Challengers really succeeds in that at various points throughout the movie, you’re hating one character in particular and rooting for another one. Then 30 minutes later you’ve done a complete 180 and find yourself changing sides, much like tennis players switching different sides of the court between sets. By the films end, I had a hard time siding with anyone–but I think it’s a strength of the movie that I am able to look past all of that because it was so successful in building interesting characters.

I’m not sure I’ve seen a director pull off sexual tension so effectively. It’s a testament to Guadagnino’s direction that you don’t see a single sex scene in the entire movie. Chalk up any phrase you want to apply to this movie, from edging the movie to tennis balls and blue balls.

On paper you wouldn’t think that Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist would have such strong chemistry on scene. I think that if this movie had landed in the hands of a more traditional Hollywood director, I don’t think you would have seen O’Connor and Faist in this movie at all. We probably would have ended up with Austin Butler and Ryan Gosling instead. Thankfully that did not happen and all three leads knock it out of the park with their performances. The standout for me though is Zendaya. It’s probably my favorite performance of her career, though I should note I have not seen her work in the television series Euphoria. She simply commands every scene that she is in and captures the persona of a big time athlete very well. People already treat athletes as god-like figures in modern culture and Zendaya has the on screen presence to back it up.

Challengers really surpassed my expectations in a lot of ways. From the trailer I expected a run of the mill love triangle involving tennis players. Maybe it doesn’t break new ground in that regard, but it’s a well executed film through it’s narrative structure, strong lead performances, and thumping soundtrack from Trent Reznor. It doesn’t surpass Guadagnino’s movie Call Me By Your Name on initial thought, but it is easily the best movie he has done since then.

★★★★