Chal­lengers review – every­thing is sex, except sex, which is power

“Every­thing is sex / except sex / which is pow­er,” sang renais­sance woman Janelle Monáe is her ridicu­lous­ly catchy 2018 banger ​‘Screwed’. It’s a sen­ti­ment echoed across the fil­mog­ra­phy of Ital­ian provo­ca­teur Luca Guadagni­no, who’s no slouch when it comes to a bit of tit­il­la­tion – ever since Til­da Swin­ton put on that lit­tle red dress in I Am Love, it’s been writ­ten in the stars. He is drawn to sto­ries about fuck­ing and fuck­ing up, and Justin Kuritzkes’ script for Chal­lengers offers some­thing to sat­is­fy both those appetites, pit­ting two ten­nis play­ers against each oth­er in a match that’s as much for love as it is for honour.

Watch­ing from the stands is Tashi (Zen­daya), a steely for­mer teen prodi­gy whose career was bit­ter­ly cur­tailed by a knee injury before she got the chance to go pro. Her devot­ed but despon­dent hus­band, Art Don­ald­son (Mike Faist), is fal­ter­ing on his way to the US Open – to boost his con­fi­dence and get some prac­tice hours in, Tashi enters him into a tiny ​‘Chal­lengers’ tour­na­ment in upstate New York. Unranked play­ers, incon­se­quen­tial prize mon­ey. It’ll be a cake­walk, she assures him, with the same con­fi­dence that has pro­pelled him to the top under her care­ful coach­ing and management.

What Tashi doesn’t account for is the pres­ence of Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly charis­mat­ic, fan­tas­ti­cal­ly washed-up star, slum­ming it in region­al tour­na­ments for prize mon­ey scraps rather than go home to his wealthy par­ents with his tail between his legs. He also hap­pens to be Tashi’s ex and Art’s for­mer best friend (those two things may be con­nect­ed). Sud­den­ly there’s more at stake than the Mike’s Tire Town Cham­pi­onship, and the trio’s tan­gled lives unrav­el in stolen snip­pets across decades and cities. An unfor­get­table night at the US Junior Open when they’re on the cusp of adult­hood becomes a life­long entan­gle­ment – and it’s not always clear who’s hold­ing onto who.

This is the sort of barbed char­ac­ter study that Gudagni­no has turned into a fine art through­out his career, delight­ing in the ways humans are con­sis­tent­ly but unique­ly cal­lous to one anoth­er. The cen­tral love tri­an­gle is fuelled by its human com­po­nents, who are stub­born and reck­less and des­per­ate in their own ways, and to vary­ing degrees of aware­ness. Their fail­ures aren’t unique, but how they man­i­fest are, and par­tic­u­lar­ly for Tashi, self-sab­o­tage seems to be a side-effect of nev­er being able to get enough of what­ev­er it is she wants.

It’s easy to see what drew Zen­daya to the role, and to the film as a pro­duc­er. This is a woman who has tak­en a lot of shit to get to where she is, and ulti­mate­ly is still forced to exist with­in the shad­ow of a man, no mat­ter how much she loves him. And no mat­ter how much he loves her. Because Art is crazy about his wife, and would do any­thing to make her happy.

The thing is, Tashi isn’t so sure she wants to be hap­py. Good ten­nis isn’t hap­py. Tashi wants a fight. She wants to be the best. She wants to have the world that was denied her when she was forced out of her dream before it was even with­in strik­ing dis­tance. Patrick reminds her of that fire: he’s cock­sure and arch and self­ish, but he’s tal­ent­ed and per­cep­tive. The way that he sees Tashi couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent from the way her hus­band sees her.

And then there’s how Art and Patrick see each oth­er: child­hood best friends and dou­bles part­ners turned love rivals. There’s a sim­mer­ing cur­rent of sex­u­al ten­sion between them, and the will they/won’t they of it all is clas­sic rom-com ter­ri­to­ry (case in point: an unex­pect­ed­ly point­ed scene involv­ing chur­ros in a col­lege cafeteria).

But too posh and pet­ty to talk about any of their long his­to­ry, the boys sweat it out on the court (and in the sauna). Ten­nis becomes an elec­tron­ic bal­let under the thump­ing Trent Reznor and Atti­cus Ross score, with the spec­ta­tors mov­ing in a care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed rhythm with each THWACK of the ball. There’s some nifty cam­er­a­work too, with lens­es attached to balls and nets so we move with the action rather than at a remove.

The spar­ing use of this cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Say­omb­hu Mukdeep­rom is for the best though. It might get a bit nau­se­at­ing if the All Eng­land Club takes the idea on board for entire match­es. Although some of the oth­er visu­al lan­guage is a lit­tle more, ahem, point­ed, it’s hard to crit­i­cise a film as play­ful as Chal­lengers for being obvious.

And that’s the thing: the film is fun. It’s smart and sexy and engag­ing, from the whip-smart dia­logue and Jonathan Anderson’s play­ful cos­tum­ing (Tiny shorts! Over­sized, peri­od-appro­pri­ate hideous polo shirts! An ​‘I TOLD YA’ shirt as famous­ly worn by JFK Jr!) down to the note-per­fect sup­port­ing actors Dar­nell Appling (who is also Zendaya’s long-time assis­tant) and Joan Mcshane.

When it comes to the main cast, Zendaya’s star pow­er is ther­monu­clear. Tashi is in total con­trol, even when she’s stum­bling, and Faist under­cuts his sweet, safe ener­gy with an aura of manip­u­la­tive promise. But it’s Josh O’Connor who emerges as MVP – a swag­ger­ing, sweaty lothario. The sort of man who would mer­ri­ly ruin your life… pos­si­bly more than once.

It’s some­thing new for him in a strong year (he could not be a more dif­fer­ent sham­bling ruin in Alice Rohrwacher’s stun­ning La Chimera) and it’s easy to see why he’s the odds-on favourite to star in Guadagnino’s next film as well. He’s a tremen­dous­ly charis­mat­ic screen pres­ence, lithe and louche as he prowls around like a par­tic­u­lar­ly con­fi­dent alleycat.

Despite Kuritzkes’ avowed inter­est in ten­nis (and Guadagnino’s lack there­of), the game is a cypher, of course. While the ded­i­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline and per­se­ver­ance that the sport requires fac­tor into Chal­lengers, the intri­ca­cies of the sport hard­ly real­ly mat­ter (beyond under­stand­ing Patrick and Art are play­ing for more than just a nov­el­ty cheque).

Per­haps it’s the com­bi­na­tion of Kuritzkes’ inter­est in and Guadagnino’s ambiva­lence towards the sport which pro­vides a sense of bal­ance. Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Patrick, Tashi describes ten­nis as a ​“rela­tion­ship between two peo­ple” – I can’t help but feel the notion applies to a film too, in the dark cin­e­ma con­gress between direc­tor and view­er. Or maybe it’s more like Janelle Monáe sang – everything’s either sex or pow­er. In Chal­lengers, it’s hard to argue otherwise.