Boy, oh boy, do we have the film of the summer – Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino has knocked it out of the park once again (or some equivalent tennis reference – hit it into the court?).
Challengers is visually rich, character-driven storytelling brought to life by beautiful movie stars, with an exhilarating score and the perfect moral quandries to argue about over an ice cream on the walk home.
We follow Tashi, an up-and-coming teen tennis champion, as her life becomes increasingly entwined with two fellow youth champions, Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson.
The narrative premise hangs on a ‘challenger’ tennis match between Zweig and Donaldson, set in present day (well, 2019…for some reason…) but we quickly begin hurtling back through time, the first flashback taking us to 2006 – to when the boys first met Tashi, and when the pair were roommates, doubles partners, and inseparable best friends. As is evident from those first opening ten minutes of their present-day match, a lot has changed since then. Over the course of fifteen years of flashbacks, we unravel the depths of their relationships, and all the points at which they tugged, knotted, and cut their ties to one another. Writer Justin Kuritzkes aptly said that the relationship between the three is, “a love triangle [where] all the corners…touch”. The three corners of this particular triangle are fiercely jealous, disgusted, and obsessed with one another.
But by far the most captivating part of the triangle is Josh O’Connor, who plays Zweig, the former teenage tennis co-champ who, unlike his former best friend and utmost confidante, never quite made it to the big leagues. Best known for his role as Prince (currently-King) Charles in the Crown, O’Connor has played radically different characters in his career, but all share a certain ‘ambitious but just a tad pathetic’ quality that I find highly amusing. Zweig is dirty, in nearly all senses of the word. He’s manipulative, sleazy, and quite literally in need of a good scrub. He’s also, thanks to O’Connor’s seemingly effortless charm, completely captivating.
Though I particularly love O’Connor’s performance, Zendaya and Mike Fast (Tashi and Art respectively) don’t come to play either. They each bring their A-game (or would it be A-match?) to embody characters who are each as deeply flawed, narcissistic, and uncontrollably competitive as their grimy third counterpart.
And a standalone moment for the score – during the last sequence, movie theatres would be wise to supply defibrillators to restart the poor audience’s hearts. The beat borders on oppressive, but nevertheless keeps the energy sky-high for a climactic concluding ten minutes that literally had me gasping.
‘But Ana if you love this movie so much why not give it 5 stars?’ Good question, reader. Because we have to have standards. Do I make up those standards? Sure – it’s my blog and I can do what I want. And while Challengers really did capture my heart, it is not a true, perfect movie.
Guadagnino can, as he is wont to do, use a heavy hand, with very literal metaphors. Tennis itself is a giant storytelling tool to describe a competition, an intimate back and forth – the name of the film is literally ‘Challengers’. There’s also a (pretty forgivable) lack level of complexity of the central character, Tashi. Zendaya is given little to do but look confident if slightly troubled, while the men around her make her life exceedingly difficult.
Even still, this film is like sipping lemonade on a hammock – if the hammock was hanging over a deep, dark chasm. It is upbeat, sunny, but just the right amount of anxiety-inducing and entirely thrilling. Absolutely one to watch this year, and probably one to watch in the minor leagues of the award circuit in the coming year. So please, go enjoy Josh O’Connor’s perfectly disgusting performance!
Reel Talk 