It’s all about tennis. Until it’s not.
Auteur director Luca Guadagnino’s latest film follows the lives of three tennis players engaged in a tenuous love triangle for over a decade. Zendaya, one of the film’s producers in addition to being the star, plays Tashi Duncan, a former junior tennis star in the same vein as a Williams sister or Coco Gauff. Duncan suffers a career-ending injury that stops her from becoming a Major-winner but cannot quell her competitive nature.
Mike Faist assumes the role of Art Donaldson, Tashi’s husband and a bona fide star of U.S. men’s tennis. When the film opens, Donaldson finds himself in a poor run of form after an injury heading towards the U.S. Open. In order to regain his confidence before the signature tournament, Tashi registers him for a Challenger event, a low-level tournament where Art discovers that his former best friend and doubles partner — as well as Tashi’s ex-boyfriend — Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) is also competing.
The film uses non-linear storytelling to its advantage throughout, as it begins in medias res with Art and Patrick’s match, then works to fill in the trio’s history at a thoughtful and sumptuous pace. But a story that covers around 15 years of the characters’ lives brings an obvious obstacle with it: Zendaya, Faist and O’Connor have to look 18 in the earliest flashbacks and in their early 30s in the contemporary timeline.
The stars’ performances, as well as the hair, makeup and costume design teams, make this aspect not just believable but tasteful and effective. In the 2006 sequences, O’Connor imbues Patrick with all the cockiness of a rising tennis phenom, for whom stardom awaits. And when the audience sees him a decade and a half later, now a middling tennis pro living out of his car as he goes from tournament to tournament, Patrick has a grimier look with a half-groomed beard and mismatched tennis clothes that pale in comparison to Art’s pristine Uniqlo whites. Meanwhile, Art — supposedly the less talented player in their youth — has transformed from the shier teenage boy into a steely and battle-hardened (and also a bit tired) veteran.
That contrast from a sporting perspective sets up an already tense dynamic between the pair that the film only builds on with their romantic history. Any conversation between Tashi and Art, or Art and Patrick, or Patrick and Tashi, could equally be about tennis, or the trio’s interpersonal dynamics, or both. Every one-on-one conversation feels cut like a tennis match, whether it takes place on the court or off, playing into the (admittedly obvious) metaphor that a tennis match and a relationship aren’t all that different.
The visceral tension between the trio also wouldn’t be possible without the contributions of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score. The duo, who’ve won a pair of Academy Awards for their work scoring “The Social Network” and the animated film “Soul,” take their work to new heights in “Challengers.” With a series of synth-soaked and clubby EDM tracks, this score stands out relative to their previous work not necessarily in its quality, where the pair never disappoints, but in its riskiness. It was a bold choice for Guadagnino, Reznor and Ross to score the film in this manner, but it pays off gloriously, giving the on-screen action the pace and intensity of a great rally.
The score often stays loud and propulsive even over the non-tennis, more dialogue-heavy scenes, making for a limited number of quiet moments. While that choice can almost make some lines of dialogue hard to hear, it ultimately works in the film’s favor, allowing writer Justin Kuritzskes’s script to shine through when the score takes a backseat. It’s also worth noting that Kuritzskes — for whom “Challengers” is his first movie credit — is married to the writer-director of the 2023 breakout hit “Past Lives,” Celine Song, which also happens to be a film about a love triangle.
Kuritzskes has another collaboration with Guadagnino lined up titled “Queer,” which will star Daniel Craig as the American Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs and will also adapt the Don Winslow crime novel “City on Fire” into a film starring Austin Butler. With “Challengers” off to a $15 million debut at the domestic box office, Kuritzskes appears to have established himself as one of Hollywood’s hottest writers.
It’s exciting for film fans that Guadagnino and Kuritzskes have another project in the works because the Italian director truly extracts the most from what’s on the page in “Challengers.” In collaboration with Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Guadagnino designs some breathtaking and hilariously creative shots in this film — particularly for its tennis match scenes — that put other sports movies to shame, including one tracking shot that glides up from below the tennis court and another from the perspective of a tennis ball.
Referring to “Challengers” loosely as a sports movie might sound reductive, but the film manages to put its thumb on exactly what makes sports compelling: narrative. Whether it be a game between rivals or friends (or lovers), “Challengers” captures a compelling dynamic for sports- and non-sports-watching film fans alike on the backs of its exceptional performances and style.