Meet your match
CHALLENGERS
Cert 15 ★★★★
In cinemas now
The scoring system of a game of singles tennis dictates both players start a match in love and victory requires forceful breaks of the romantic deadlock. Love in myriad forms is the driving force in Challengers, a sexually charged study of the twisted relationship between two tennis players and the ferociously ambitious young woman who comes between them.
Screenwriter and playwright Justin Kuritzkes, husband of Oscar-nominated Past Lives filmmaker Celine Song, serves a tantalising battle of wits between Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. Their on-screen chemistry sizzles, crescendoing with a steamy encounter in a hotel room that attests to the actors’ unwavering trust in director Luca Guadagnino.
Pulses continually race as the leads lob each other loaded dialogue, like when O’Connor and Faist’s buddies-turned-rivals attempt to intimidate each other in a sauna. One intentionally drops his towel, the other responds with a taunt about who ended up with the girl (“This is a game about winning the points that matter...”)
Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom energise on-court action with kinetic camerawork, including dizzying sequences from the ball’s perspective as it ricochets back and forth over the net to repeated thwacks and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s electronic score. Challengers contrasts the sweat-drenched exertions of O’Connor and Faist, who look ready to implode with exhaustion, with Zendaya’s masterful verbal rallies.
As a sports prodigy cruelly halted in her prime by injury, she devours the screen.
“You’d have a better shot with a handgun in your mouth,” she coldly informs O’Connor’s low-ranking wannabe about his chances of beating Faist’s self-doubting champion.
Fractured chronology shifts the balance of power, keeping us guessing who will fire off the next zinging ace and seize the advantage. As awestruck observers to mounting devastation and smashed rackets, we are the only sure-fire winners. Game, set, love match.
‘‘ Contrasts their sweaty exertions with Zendaya’s masterful verbal rallies