In case anyone has forgotten, 2024 is an Olympic year with the 33rd Olympiad scheduled to begin this July in Paris. So what better way to hype yourself up for the Olympics than by watching a new film about sports, rivalry, and competition? This new film is Challengers, and it had me thinking much longer than I expected after leaving the theater.
Italian director Luca Guadagnino gained mainstream recognition with his gorgeous 2017 romance, Call Me by Your Name. Like his 2017 hit, Challengers is filled to the max with sexual tension and unspoken yearning. Due to the playful cynicism of the dialogue, Challengers is not a love triangle but more like a triangle of desire between three professional tennis players, one a woman and two of them men.
As the two men prepare to play against each other in a small-town tournament, this film takes viewers through various flashbacks showing the friendships, affairs, failures, and marriages between these three determined players over the years.
Yes, a lot of tennis action is in this film, but of course it's not about tennis. Challengers is about winning: winning a tennis match, winning a woman's attention, winning fame and wealth, or winning dominance over your enemy. And for some promising athletes, winning is more important than anything else.
In memorable romantic comedies, language is often at the heart of romance. Watch any film written or directed by Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally..., 1989) to be reminded of this. But in this film, language is at the heart of condescending flirtations and nuanced manipulations with the three attractive athletes changing sides, and their aspirations, over the years, leading up to a tennis match charged with unspoken rage, lust, and secrets.
With so many flashbacks to different time periods and events, the narrative gets a little dizzying and tiring in the latter half. But all the flashbacks build up to a terrifically climactic tennis game that honestly had my heart racing in the last few minutes.
Challengers is an impressively tactile and sensory film showing extreme closeups of the fuzz on a tennis ball, the sweat dripping off a man's face, or the skidding of a sneaker across concrete. This film style, paired with the complex chemistry between the three main characters, makes Challengers very sexy and disarmingly confident. (The sex appeal is most significant when a threesome makeout session takes an awkwardly erotic turn on a hotel bed, and when the fit bodies of the two male tennis pros are on full display.)
At two hours and 11 minutes long, it could be a little shorter. Some of the close-ups of faces and shots of people walking in slow motion didn't need to last so long. But Challengers is an interesting study of relationships with an arresting soundtrack of thumping, techno, dance music. Like a trend forecaster at a fashion magazine might say, Challengers is a film that feels like now. And the evasive, wily conversations will keep audiences guessing as to who the rightful winner is.
