Two tennis hopefuls are kissing in a college dorm room, the sounds of campus life lapping at the window, and an argument is brewing. Patrick (played by Josh O’Connor) asks his girlfriend Tashi (Zendaya), “Are we still talking about tennis?” He plays the sport full time while she is studying at Stanford in case she ever needs to pursue a more academically-rigorous career as a back-up. Patrick has a more lax approach to the game (and life), while Tashi, who already has an Adidas backing, has a keener grip on what’s at stake. She looks at him with the intensity of a 150 mph serve: “We’re always talking about tennis.”
I understand Patrick’s frustration – he has been living and breathing the sport since he was a boarder at a tennis academy – but it is refreshing territory for a romantic drama, where characters are usually doomed to talk about their feelings in very direct, rigid ways. Tennis, with its constant back and forths, is not exactly a subtle metaphor for relationships but it does push Challengers, out 26 April, beyond its genre boundaries. And most of this energetic film is happily unfixed. The world is one of changing rooms, hotel suites and spectator stands: transient places where no one quite settles down. People swap clothes and bodily fluids. They win matches, lose them, keep cool and break down at the sidelines. Everyone’s balls are in the air.
About that love triangle. Patrick is best friends and doubles partner with Art (West Side Story’s Mike Faist). They have just won a doubles tournament when they meet Tashi, already a rising star, and freshly victorious over Anna Mueller (don’t feel sorry for her! She’s “a sore loser and racist bitch,” Tashi says, in one of the film’s casual but pointed comments about the tennis industry). They share a steamy if stunted night in a hotel room – an excellently choreographed scene – but only one of them is allowed her phone number. Which one? Whoever wins the singles final tomorrow. Patrick wins this battle, but the war – over the girl and tennis titles – has only just begun. We rejoin them, a decade later, in New York’s New Rochelle, at a challengers match: Art, a world champion who needs an easy win; Patrick, down on his luck and desperate for prize money; Tashi, retired owing to an injury and now Art’s coach.
All this gameplay circles a point about co-dependency, on and off the court. How do we know when someone is the right fit? How can some people be both perfect and terrible for us? The film does not provide any revelations on this front, but who cares? Everyone is clearly having a lot of fun. Zendaya, fresh out of the desert in Dune: Part Two, finally finds a role deserving of her red-carpet charm. O’Connor is suitably douchey and Faist, given the hardest role as the film’s uptight emotional core, has never been better as man in the throes of an existential crisis.
Director Luca Guadagnino, behind cannibal drama Bones and All and yearning gay coming-of-age piece Call Me By Your Name (both starring Timothée Chalamet), brings his typically tasteful blend of sex and sweat and sleaze to proceedings. There is a smart screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes (the husband of Past Lives writer-director Celine Song: presumably these two wile away their days discussing the intricacies of love triangles). A pumping score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross keeps things pacy. And Jonathan Anderson, erstwhile creative director at Loewe, deserves a shout out for his witty costume design here. Spot Zendaya’s “I Told Ya” T-shirt (previously seen on, er, JFK Jr.) All that certainly make it the coolest film of the year.
But could it be the hottest?
I will not spoil things, though the trailer gives away most of the sex scenes, but the film’s on-court scenes are usually hotter than anything in the bedroom. Which makes sense, for tennis is sexy. There’s a uniform, there’s tension. There’s sweat. That hasn’t always translated to the big screen. In Match Point, the courts of The Queens Club and a country estate are a drab, restrictive framework for an upper class affair. In the largely-forgotten (though not by this writer!) Kirsten Dunst-fronted Wimbledon, the matches are the means to a rom-com end.
Thank god Guadagnino leans into the sport’s sex appeal. This is a man who relishes spoiled peaches, human hearts, short shorts, and has now assembled three of Hollywood’s most buzzy actors for a two-hour endorphin rush. They sweat, they shoot, they score. In one of the very final games, following a silent, shared revelation, all three characters stare at each other with love, betrayal and lust. Patrick glares suggestively. Art leans forward, sweat dripping into the camera. Tashi lets out a guttural scream. And, uh, sorry, what was the question again? Are we still talking about tennis?
‘Challengers’ is in cinemas 26 April
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
