Perhaps my most anticipated movie of the decade. Pardon me if I re-use this joke on the podcast but this film very much reminds me of the Alec Baldwin joke at the Oscars when he said that Invictus combined his two favourite things “rugby and tensions between blacks and whites” and when it comes to Challengers I can’t help but hear myself saying that it combines my two favourite things; tennis and messy cheating based situationships. But it goes beyond a love of tennis and a love on screen and regrettably off of messy relationships, the team around this film just sells itself so immediately as a box-ticker. Every detail of the crew and cast that you mention further excites and titillates until you realise that you’re certainly in for one of the most exciting movies of the year. The joy of joys I have in announcing that Challengers is just as good as I hoped and in so many ways may even be better.
I am of course to anybody who knows me a tremendous tennis fan myself, and obviously a huge film fan and so my case for Tennis on film being a vastly underused avenue has often been quite outspoken, I even penned a whole article on this blog around four years ago about how all the great tennis movies more or less avoid focussing on the actual tennis; “Why are the best Tennis movies about murder? A simple enough question; because Tennis is boring to watch. Except that’s just not true, or at least not in my eyes. Most people however find Tennis to be a dull sport. If you the reader similarly hold this opinion than I will direct you immediately to any of the Federer finals at Wimbledon, or any of the other numerous extremely watchable Tennis matches from across the years. This led me to start thinking about Tennis in film and why there isn’t a laundry list of great Tennis movies, such as there is with baseball or other such sports like Boxing. Pick a sport and you can pull out about five or so arguably great movies based around the world of it, and even the outside choices like ice hockey still get their Slapshot’s”. I carried on and went on to pitch for my conclusion such a film that for my money sounds scarily similar to Challengers, and I was writing all this in 2020. “I long for an alternate universe where in the mid 70’s William Goldman wrote a Tennis drama-comedy for Paul Newman mentoring Robert Redford to a win at an open. Maybe directed by Mike Nichols, with an Elaine May or Nora Ephron touch-up on the script (not that a Goldman script would need it). Then have Jessica Lange or Susan Sarandon for the love interest, or even bring Katherine Ross onboard for a true Butch Cassidy reunion. Call it On the Line and you have a possible masterpiece. But alas, such things cannot be. How unfortunate, cause that film does genuinely sound absolutely brilliant”. I mean update my dated period references and you more or less have Challengers, and I mean that in the way of saying that one finally received his beloved wish.
I think I really do mean it when I say that every single aspect of Challengers is working on top form. There isn’t a single wasted frame or moment that doesn’t brim with excellence in every single decision made. Nothing is wasted and to say that this is on its very surface level a rather simple tale of a love triangle, this movie is so very much enriched by the quality of Justin Kuritzke’s screenplay, Luca Guadagnino’s direction and the trio of stunning lead performances. The screenplay to begin with is sublime, balancing time and time again so many different timelines and plotlines on a narrative angle, but more importantly balancing so beautifully the personal dynamics that make this the hallowed adult drama that we I feel as a movie going nation pine for to be delivered on this scale and with this budget. It’s a stunning debut and a calling card for his future to say the least. Guadagnino brings his masterful art of over indulgence to the screen once more and adds to his cannon another film that feels unmistakeably in his oeuvre and yet once again launches him into another area of genre and tone, for as much as elements of his previous films can be viewed here, there remains a joyous freshness to his films every single time. Even his two horror films feel miles apart, as do his two seductive messy romance films with this and A Bigger Splash feeling joyfully different in so many fun ways. The three leads however are the core of the depth and the complexities that this film jubilantly relishes in, never once pulling punches with character’s actions or likability’s. Zendaya is not as firmly the films leads as she is being advertised to be, I for one think that the film is actually rather evenly spread between the three leads, however it is Zendaya that perhaps has the most interior work to do and the most heavy lifting when it comes to making the actions and statements of her character more of depth than perhaps they first read on the page. It’s a stunning performance of subtlety whilst the film around her is so entirely visually gut-punching. Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor do such wonderful work playing against each other, whilst also making each character feel wholly of its own. Faist here has to take the softer route and plays things more down the line of vulnerability and is perfect for what he is being called to do, but this is a movie with a primeval engine and that engine’s name is Josh O’Connor, who gives one of the best performances of the year and is for me the film strongest standout in a film overflowing with standout features and qualities. The film is indeed largely about these three people, however I wouldn’t sleep on the work of Darnell Appling or Hailey Gates as film stealers in the very limited time that they are on screen.
But it goes so far
beyond these above the line factors, every single person involved brings this
film to a higher level than some dullards might reductively say it has any
right to be. This is again afterall a simple adult tale pulsating with
adrenaline and sex that for as much as it is about power and does leave you
mulling and thinking over things, does ultimately leave you with the final
impression of how great sex and tennis is. The cinematography of Sayombhu
Mukdeeprom is on another level taking the heights of his previous work with
Guadagnino to new heights managing to make every single game and set of the
tennis shown entirely visceral and visually different, but his craft goes
beyond these matches and bleeds into the most subtle of angles and movements to
make this entire film bristle and writhe with energy, power and propulsion. The
editing of Marco Costa has been reductively commented on a few times as far too
kinetic and far too often within scenes, however one need only look at the
glorious one take in the middle of the film to see that Costa and Guadagnino
are working completely on the same wavelength and know fully when and when not
to using the stunning dynamism that makes much of the film the success it is.
However perhaps above everybody else, is there a more key factor to this films
raging success than the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that somehow
balances Parisian soft piano themes with raging club beats with orchestrations
of traditional choral pieces. Specifically it is the techno that takes Challengers
to a whole new level, whether it be intrusively raging over dialogue scenes
or making the finale tennis game one of the most thrilling things I will ever
see this year I have no doubt. As a solo movie watcher, it is very rare for me
to have visceral and outload reactions, especially in British cinemas but
multiple times Challengers teased them out of me. This is if nothing
else a movie that teases out of you the exact reaction it wants and receives it
in abundance.
10/10 – in every single way that pure cinema should be. Guadagnino’s direction is perfection and perhaps the ultimate ode to his depictions of consumption and lust on screen. Kuritzke’s script is on a level of Samy Burch’s for May December in regards to the finest screenplay debuts of the century for me and for them to come so quick on each other’s heels is beyond a special thing. Faist, Zendaya and O’Connor are all beyond sublime and if O’Connor and Faist do some category fraud, I would not be surprised if they could lead with Zendaya to a three way Oscar performance sweep. I have waited so, so very long for Challengers and for it to live up to my expectations as so very much as it did is saying something certainly in need. A masterpiece. Pure f*cking cinema.
P.S. Can we start giving audience’s a little bit more credit? The excessive title carding of ever single year and time and date in this film did grow quite infuriating for me and I know that that is a personal pet peeve of mine, however this film just does such a marvellous job in the details and performances and writing for us to never get lost and yet we still feel the need to have us be talked down to, because frankly that’s always how it feels to me.
SPOILER P.S. On a first watch and I admit even on a second watch I don’t think I’m wholly convinced on the ending, to me it feels like Magnolia and Babylon syndrome all over again, where I absolutely adore and love 99% of a film only for it to just take the wrong route for me at the very, very end. Perhaps it will grow on me, but even now after penning my 10/10 review it is still an ending that I have issues with and could have very easily been a few cuts prior and had THE ending of the year?
- - Thomas Carruthers
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