Love equals zero in romantic triangle
“Challengers” tells the story of the romantic entanglements of three young people over the course of 13 years. It’s set against the backdrop of professional tennis, and though the characters’ intersecting romance is the focus, the sport amps up the intensity in all kinds of ways.
Director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) employs vigorous cuts and sometimes has the camera follow in the immediate wake of the ball, so that it’s almost as if it were the camera itself flying back and forth over the net. A tennis match can be a personal battle, a clash not only of athleticism but of mind, and Guadagnino gives every game and set the gravity of gladiatorial contest.
The years between the late teens and early 30s are consequential for everyone, but for an athlete, those years are determinative. Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist play people who are barely coming into their maturity as adults at the same time they must be fully formed performers on the court. They’re figuring out how to be human while trying to be superhuman, and the mind-scrambling strain of that, particularly for the men, is felt throughout.
“Challengers” tells a story that zigzags through time. I doubt if anyone has ever seen the words “three months earlier” or “thirteen years earlier” flash onto a screen without feeling let down. We never want to go forward; we always want to flash ahead. But this is how the filmmakers have chosen to tell the story, and soon we get used to it.
Art (Faist) and Patrick (O’Connor) are best friends and promising tennis professionals when they go to a tournament and meet Tashi (Zendaya), who, at 18, is already a rising star with all the confidence that goes with it. Both guys are passionately attracted to her, but the rivalry is, at this stage, friendly, probably because it’s just assumed that
Tashi will choose Patrick, who’s the better player in both senses of the word.
Yet, 13 years later — though only a few minutes, in terms of screen time — we find that Tashi is married to Art, that Art has had a highly successful and lucrative tennis career, and that Tashi is his manager and trainer. As for Patrick, he’s out of their lives (almost) and out of tennis (almost). The rest of the movie tells the story of how it all happened and of what happens next.
Zendaya, the Oakland native who went from local theater to big-screen fame with roles in the HBO series “Euphoria” and the “Spider-Man” and “Dune” film franchises, was one of the producers of “Challengers,” and she has given herself quite a role. Tashi is a strong woman, but she’s ungiving to the point of unloving. Tennis is more than an obsession for her. It’s the entire focus of her life, her entire value system, her entire vision of the fu- ture. For her, there’s no* happiness without tennis, which makes her a fascinating character, and a morally problematic one as well. When you walk out of the movie theater, Tashi is the person you’ll be talking about.
The youth of all three characters is particularly welcome. Love stories involving actors in their 20s and early 30s usually concentrate on courtship, but a lot of tumult, tawdriness and tortured history can take place during those years. If the characters were all in their 40s, “Challengers” would still be a good movie, but it would be less sensual, less fraught and less emotionally cruel.
As for the actors, this movie marks Zendaya’s arrival into complete cinematic maturity. “Challengers” also puts O’Connor, who was good as Prince Charles in “The Crown,” and Faist, who was offbeat and compelling as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” on the proverbial map. I hope Hollywood lets them stay there.