Challengers
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Written by Justin Kuritzkes
Starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor
Rated R
Runtime: 2 hours, 11 minutes
In theaters April 26

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

What does it mean to “know” a person? To truly understand them? In some ways, perhaps in many ways, it feels impossible. The inner lives of others are truly mysterious. A therapist, a lover, a parent, they can only truly know us based on what we say and how we act. They still have to make certain assumptions about what we feel and think. Our exterior communication is the only evidence-based mark of our interiors, but that is extremely subjective. How I intended to say something versus how someone else heard it might be a large gap. Where I was going for kindness, the other person heard condescension. The back and forth between people is the definition of a relationship, two inner lives trying to reach out and make a connection. In Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, Challengers, tennis becomes a malleable metaphor for the way we try to externalize our internal desires and the distance between ourselves and the people we feel closest to. “Tennis is a relationship” teenage tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya tells her prospective paramours Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor). 

For Tashi, tennis is everything. While she declines going pro in order to go to college so she can learn skills other than smacking balls with a racquet, a successful tennis career could lift her family into a much higher wealth strata. Even her foreplay in bed is dominated by tennis talk. She expects the most of herself, and her respect is earned through dedication and perseverance. The relationship aspect of tennis unfolds for her when both she and her opponent are locked into a match, and the volleys back and forth become a form of dance. Lead and follow, anticipation and execution back and forth across the court. 

Meanwhile, Art and Patrick both come from wealth. They don’t need to live and breathe tennis the way Tashi does in order to earn a living, especially Patrick. The two men came of age as longtime roommates at a costly tennis academy, and they even win a doubles tournament right around the time they meet Tashi. That first night meeting her–when she comes back to their dorm room and initiates a physical relationship with both of them– changes the course of all three of their lives, and it changes the relationship between Art and Patrick forever. Tashi says she will date whichever of them wins in their next match, and the psychological game begins. While we see a lot of tennis over the course of Challengers, the mind games between the central trio play out over the entire course of the film. 

The core tension–the one that informs everything in the film–is the way the pressure cooker of capitalism presses down on everyone and forces conformity on careers, relationships, and every other aspect of life. For Tashi, the course her life takes after her injury keeps her connected to tennis but also makes her disconnected from her family, as so much of her existence is tied to Art’s career on the court. While Art has accomplished just about everything he wants in life, he feels compelled to keep playing tennis for other people, rather than any passion remaining in himself. And Patrick, the third point of this triangle, has embraced loserdom, and affects a down-on-his-luck persona, while presumably all of his financial pressures could disappear with a phone call home. 

But what does Tashi actually think about Art and Patrick? How does Art feel about Patrick and Tashi? Patrick’s feelings seem closest to the surface in the present day sections, although he often confuses disaffected aloofness for maturity. To be honest, no one in this trio has truly matured, because coming of age requires moving on and reevaluating relationships. Each of these people are arrested, molded by the bubble of professional tennis and further distorted by capitalism. As an economic system, capitalism pushes forward conformity and monogamous relationships in order to perpetuate itself, presenting us all with false binaries. None of the main characters in the film feel any sort of actual fulfillment or satisfaction with their lives, and their former passion for tennis has been sanded down to nothing but perpetuating a habit in the name of financial income. And because of that, their passion for life itself seems diminished.

Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes emphasizes this through the story’s structure. Unfolding over the course of a U.S. Open qualifying tournament–one where Tashi is coaching, Art is slumming for an easy victory, and Patrick is trying to claim a spot in the Open–but intercut with extensive flashbacks to the preceding decade, we learn about these characters in chronological order, from teenagers, through their college years, and into adulthood. We see the ways in which they have changed, and so many more ways in which they are the exact same people. 

Guadagnino interprets the sport as both a dance and as a battle. His choices in the tennis sequences hold nothing back, and rival anything in his Suspiria remake for their bold styling and aggressive sound design. Off the court, Guadagnino is mostly restrained, and intensely focused on the performances within. Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor give incredible performances at each of the characters’ ages and are absolutely mesmerizing in every single scene. The tension between them is always palpable, and the verbal and sexual back and forth between them is as captivating as the tennis, the serves and volleys never stopping even when the action is away from the court. 

Challengers is a masterfully constructed psychological thriller about the desires of the body and spirit. Not since Bull Durham has a sports movie been this focused on character development, not to mention the relationship between sex, sports, and psychology. While Descartes and his Enlightenment brethren posited that there was a separation between mind and body, Guadagnino’s recent work (as well as many other artists, especially queer storytellers) is pushing back against this notion. In Challengers, there is no distinction between the desire of the mind and the body. It is social mores, expectations, and, yes, capitalism that cause the mind and body to fall out of sync. Challengers offers much to dig into, with its juxtapositions, reversals, and consistent tension that I know it will be a movie I revisit several more times, trying to fully unpack everything within.