Here, Zendaya is Tashi Duncan, once a tennis phenomenon, who suffered a serious injury, preventing her from pursuing her dream career corresponding to her talent. A fierce animal on the field, she ended up transferring that determination to her role as coach of her husband, Art (Mike Faist), who at the time we meet him is going through a complicated phase of defeats, not in keeping with his professional level. In a stubborn search to give him some stimulation, Tashi launches a new challenge: he must participate in a tournament Challengerswhere he has a better chance of enjoying victory again… This is before he finds out that he will have Patrick (Josh O’Connor) as a rival on the other side of the net, a long-time friend and ex-boyfriend of Tashi, who in the meantime He’s no longer a friend, and he’s not going through better days either (he doesn’t even have money to pay for a motel room).
These general lines of the present, which are drawn around the film’s main tennis match, come to the viewer’s understanding through a device of backwards and forwards in time designed to narrate the characters’ profiles – from the time they meet as teenagers to the adult life – but also to intertwine the laws of desire with the competitive vibration of sport. Everything served by a tonic gesture of filmmaking, in which the camera work and the techno soundtrack by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross come together in a true stylish project. It is no coincidence that Challengers is Guadagnino’s sexiest film, always pulling for the “Zendaya effect”, highlighting the physical intensity of tennis (which refers to another type of intensity) and creating an agile and invigorating experience. The equivalent of a gym class.
Of course, in this love triangle the desire is not just directed at Zendaya’s female character, which highlights Guadagnino’s queer signature. But it would be said that the luminous essence of Challengersits note of comic-dramatic intelligence, is based on the original screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, a debutante who happens to be the husband of Celine Song, director of the popular semi-autobiographical drama Past lives. This one, by the way, is also centered on a love triangle, which goes from Seoul to New York, with the American boyfriend being reminiscent of Kuritzkes himself…
It goes without saying that Challengers offers no other analogy with the delicate Past lives. Luca Guadagnino’s film is an energy drink, an object permeated by electricity, which seeks the perfect acoustics of the strong hit of the racket on the ball, giving everything, really everything – like its protagonist – for the spectacle of a good tennis match. Sometimes it seems a little excessive, but this is still the style appropriate to sexual tension according to Guadagnino. And Zendaya, let’s not have any doubts, is an absolute powerhouse on screen: also a credit to a director who knew how to give her the right touch of coolness and mischief.
