Review: Challengers

Director:  Luca Guadagnino

Stars:  Josh O’Connor, Zendaya, Mike Faist

In a recent Discord chat I took part in, the subject of Luca Guadagnino’s filmography came up, and it was suggested that, of our roster of internationally renowned contemporary directors, his output tends to court love and ire in equal measure over a range of tonally different projects. No two Guadagnino stans are exactly alike, and one’s pleasure will often prove to be another’s poison. I’ve personally found the Italian maverick’s output fairly consistent up to this point (okay, I Am Love is a little precious for my tastes, and while I enjoyed Bones and All it hasn’t lured me back… yet). But it looks like I’ve finally found the one I can’t abide. It’s his latest, the universally-acclaimed Challengers.

Being a contrarian isn’t all that fun, and I’m certainly not electing to be one for the hits (this site gets few clicks and if I wanted to up my online footprint I’d probably have tried to be more inspired than this), and – believe it or not – I always want to be transported when I go to the movies. Always want to be surprised, challenged, delighted. And Guadagnino did challenge me here. Mainly through making me bored and annoyed, often at the same time (a feat in itself).

This director’s pedigree meant I was on board with the movie regardless, but the premise itself did little to woo me. Tennis? Not my game. Zendaya? Not my favourite actor. Faist and O’Connor? Both have been highlights of other movies, but could they carry me through what seemed, on paper, a decidedly featherweight love-triangle saga? I spent the lead-up to Challengers wondering – with increasing anxiety – what was I missing?

If anything the movie delivers less than its middling trailers promised. Nothing here is as salacious as suggested by the use of Rihanna’s “S&M” in all those promotional materials. Challengers proves to be a deeply trivial, overlong, dawdling slog. Not so much a bizarre love triangle as a banal one, desperately in need of some editing. One that only comes alive in it’s final five minutes, which is nowhere near enough to compensate for the interminable two hours that precede them.

Working with his regular scribe Justin Kuritzkes (who I’m now hearing is married to Celine Song of Past Lives? HMMM…), Guadagnino presents tennis as a metaphor for relationships, charting through leisurely a-chronology the interconnected love lives of three wannabe champions; Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), and the object of their affections, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). The ‘present day’ of the picture is an ostensibly low-stakes 2019 contest at New Rochelle, New York that pits the two men against one another with Tashi sitting courtside. Their sets are interspersed with flashbacks that doll out history and context, encouraging us to care.

Off the bat this makes the film feel flat, as it’s not until we’re neck-deep in the first rewind that any sense of dramatic tension is particularly ascribed. Up until then – roughly half an hour – we’re left dawdling through trivialities that mean nothing to us, coasting on the disparity of comfort between down-on-his-luck Patrick and the relative success of Art and Tashi, co-habiting lovelessly in their sleek penthouse.

The much vaunted threesome teased in the trailer between the young professionals in their late teens is a win for those seeking a depiction of a wry bisexual awakening, but the spoken confessional beforehand is honestly more interesting and revealing and the scene that ultimately unfolds is typified by a lack of heat and intensity, and – for a filmmaker as sensually attuned as Guadagnino usually is – an unexpected timidity. The three actors are fine, but the tempo of the piece is so leisurely and half-hearted that little sense of fire or involvement is conjured or encouraged. That lack persists for the remainder of the picture.

Overwhelmingly working against the movie, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross lather Challengers is hyperactive techno that clashes fiercely with quiet scenes, drowning out dialogue, creating a clash of sensibilities that reads as intrusive and awkward as opposed to interesting or dynamic. It might be great for a gym workout. It’s atrocious as over-score, making a dull experience simply aggravating. A worthwhile experiment, maybe, but not a successful one.

And so Challengers stutters back and forth, back and forth, cluttering the screen with intense amounts of ungainly product placement (most pointedly outside of the sports arenas where such advertising is to be expected), filling-in the blanks of an only-slightly storied competition between two men, whose vying for one woman belies their obviously unresolved feelings for each other. Frankly, it’s boring.

Things liven up some on the court. As someone who has suffered four separate knee dislocations, Tashi’s career-stymieing mishap amounts to the most visceral moment in the whole movie, while Guadagnino’s own admitted disinterest in tennis has cajoled out of the director a tenacity rarely seen in the sport’s depiction. Balls are volleyed direct to camera, daring the viewer to blink, and, in the pivotal final set between Art and Patrick, Gudagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom invoke Brit sitcom Peep Show with some urgent POV sequences, and even place us in the vantage of the tennis ball itself. Such pyrotechnics help transmit the ferocity of the volleys, but these energised efforts can’t make up for this simply uninteresting soap opera that has surrounds it (which might’ve been up to 10 minutes shorter if Guadagnino went easier on the slow-mo).

Zendaya walks, poses and scowls with all the swagger of a major movie star, and Tashi herself remains intangibly out of reach. For Art, for Patrick, for us. A bored, frustrated and resentful businesswoman, and not the sports hero she dreamed of becoming. Art’s sadsack routine is wearying, and while Patrick owns his shit-heel personality, that’s not enough for us to get on board with it.

…I say ‘us’, but I feel like it’s just me here. Out on a limb, or rather out in the foyer while everyone else enjoys the show. I’m a cold fish for this one. Didn’t move me, didn’t grab me, and mostly didn’t interest me. One of the dampest squibs of the year. A nothing movie.

Anyone got a copy of Bones and All I could borrow?