Zendaya, Guadagnino serve up a well-made drama
Challengers (M, 132 mins) Directed by Luca Guadagnino Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ***½
Thirteen years ago, Art and Patrick were best friends. They were roommates at the same tennis academy at 12, had risen through the ranks to become promising young players on the brink of professional careers and, when they were 20 or so, had been at a party where they met Tashi Duncan, who was burning through the American women’s college circuit like a meteor and was tipped to become a world champion, just as soon as she turned professional.
Both young men were smitten with Tashi. As Art quips, “who wouldn't fall in love with you?”
But despite one eventful evening which leaves everyone involved wondering whether Art and Patrick wouldn’t just be happier with each other, this trio will have to become a couple and one spare wheel.
And for now, it is Tashi and Patrick who will pair off, leaving Art to practise his forehand in private and remain friends with Patrick in public.
But now all that is in the past – and life has taken a few turns. Because in present day, Tashi and Art are married with a daughter. Art has become a world champion himself, but is now on a downward slide. So Tashi has arranged for Art to fight it out in a lowly ranked challengers tournament, to see if he can get back the mongrel and the will to win.
But waiting for Art in the draw of the tournament is old mate Patrick, who maybe has one great game left in him.
Challengers zips back and forth through the sets and the years. Pretty much the entire film is bracketed within Art and Patrick's present-day showdown – with the three sets of the match nicely framing the three acts that we are told a film should have. A serve in the present day can land back in 2008, as the young trio bicker and fall in and out of love.
Writer Justin Kuritzkes – best known as a playwright – is clearly loving the power of cinema to skip across a decade and director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) is equally happy to construct an intricate puzzle of a film, but still have it tick the boxes of a sports rom-com and box-office hit.
The big name here is Zendaya, of course, who picks up a producing credit. Zendaya keeps Tashi on a narrow set of rails. At one point, having just won a big game, Tashi lets out a holler of genuine emotion and Art later comments that was the first time she ever seemed fully human to him. We in the audience may well feel the same.
As Art and Patrick, Mike Faist (West Side Story) and Josh O’Connor are more than fine, with O’Connor especially burying any memory of his work as Prince Charles in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown, and maybe resurrecting some of the anarchy that made him such a force in 2017’s God’s Own Country.
Challengers is artfully constructed and well made. It mostly flies across the screen and fills that two-hour-plus running time with plenty of action and intrigue.
It collapses into contrivance in the home straight a little, as the script strains to keep the two men from becoming the hero or the villain, and a last swerve towards mischief and subversiveness seems to have been diluted from what could have been delivered, but I still walked out grinning.
Also, the cinematography from Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) is astonishing, and the Trent Reznor-Atticus Ross soundtrack a banger. So there’s that.
Challengers is in cinemas nationwide.