I told ya: Guadagnino Serves Up ‘Challengers’

Cinema | April 30th, 2024

By Greg Carlson

“I’m not a homewrecker,” insists Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan as she prematurely ends a three-way encounter involving doubles partners and best pals Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). Tashi’s instincts will hold serve throughout Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, sexy, and ridiculously entertaining “Challengers.” Guadagnino’s fascinating, enviable filmography is stocked with triumphs large and small. From 2009 breakthrough “I Am Love” to critical apex “Call Me by Your Name” (the latter unfortunately stained after the fact by Armie Hammer’s career implosion), the Italian filmmaker explores desire like his life depends on it.

Guadagnino even christened “I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash,” and “Call Me by Your Name” his “Desire Trilogy.” Now, working from a script by Justin Kuritzkes, Guadagnino turns his attention to another kind of triplicate in a sinewy showcase certain to extend the upward trajectory of the no-ceiling-in-sight Zendaya. Presented in a complex series of time-jumps that mimic the give-and-take aspects of a close tennis match (if not the linear chronology), “Challengers” uses the game as an extended metaphor to scrutinize the enigmatic appetite of a young woman who concentrates her considerable acumen to replace the power and control she loses when a career-ending injury forces her to switch from player to coach.

As a symbolic vehicle with which to pique viewer interest, the sport of tennis has been courted (pun intended) in a variety of genres. While Richard Loncraine’s “Wimbledon” parallels several aspects of the game recycled here by Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale,” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” are just a few other films that communicate something beyond the swing of the racket. None of these examples, however, have as sizable an influence on “Challengers” as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train.”

Both “Strangers on a Train” and “Challengers” understand that tennis can reveal class distinctions via the game’s snobbish and elitist jeu de paume and Sport of Kings history; Guadagnino never misses an opportunity to contrast the wealth of Team Donaldson against the sleep-in-your-car scruffiness of Zweig — even if the latter, as Tashi claims, is faking his hardship. Like striving up-and-comer Guy Haines and wealthy, psychopathic schemer Bruno Antony in “Strangers on a Train,” the predictable/dull masochism of Art and the rakish volatility of Patrick invite us to compare the criss-crossed pairs. Both movies pave a path to intense homoeroticism.

In a shot taken directly from Hitchcock, Tashi stares straight ahead from her seat at center court while the faces of all the other spectators swivel left and right, following the trajectory of the volley. In 1951, of course, the onscreen repercussions of toying with any queerness — whether overt or covert — typically resulted, by the final frames if not sooner, in death. This difference is where “Challengers” and “Strangers on a Train” most notably part ways. Guadagnino makes sure that everything, from the pops and grunts on the soundtrack to the balls-eye view of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography to the urgency of another fantastic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, leads to a climactic moment to be savored.

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