On the Challengers tennis court, three players play: two men and a woman. A classic triangle in which each, from time to time, loves the other and then hates him. This is the scenario of Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, in theaters today distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
On the one hand there is the beautiful Tashi Duncan (the actress, singer and dancer Zendaya), a former tennis prodigy who, against her will, became a coach after an accident on the court, an irresistible woman who is all too aware of her charm. And on the other two tennis players who are more than friends: the regular, reliable and handsome Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and the unreliable, talented and crazy Patrick (Josh O’Connor).
They both immediately fall in love with Tashi and she reveals her transgressive and open character by involving them in bed where everything becomes fluid.
With Sayonbhu Mukdeeprom’s calligraphic, sensual photography lingering on sweat and male nudity and a syncopated, blaring experimental score from Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Soul, The Social Network, Bones and All), Challengers goes back and forth over time, following the events of this trio between tennis and love encounters.
And this until the final crescendo: the definitive duel between Art and Patrick.
A lot of time has passed since their first meeting, now Tashi Duncan is married to Art, who in the meantime has become a champion thanks to her guidance, but recently the champion has come back from a series of defeats that have made him insecure. So when Tashi discovers that her husband is about to challenge her Patrick, her ex who is still very much taken by her, in the tournament final, she understands that it won’t just be a sporting challenge. In the final match, which is very beautiful, rhythmic (so much so that it makes you want to dance) and epic at the same time, it will be about understanding which couple in the triangle will prevail.
Oscar and BAFTA nominee Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, I Am Love) directed the film – which was supposed to open the last Venice Film Festival, but was withdrawn due to the actors’ strike – from a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes while the producers are himself, Amy Pascal, Zendaya and Rachel O’Connor, with Bernard Bellew as executive producer.
Seeing something of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers in Challengers is too easy. On the other hand, Guadagnino has never hidden his admiration for this director to whom he is dedicating a documentary entitled Joie de vivre.
And it doesn’t end there, the director has just finished filming Queer again from a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes and based on the 1985 novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs starring Daniel Craig.
Cult phrase from Challengers that is only apparently obvious: “Don’t consider a game won if it isn’t over yet”.
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