American sports films act as unwitting excuses for the male horndogs in them to hide the strong feelings that develop during moments of crisis on the field or on the court. Women watch from the literal sidelines. By placing at its center the woman responsible for the sexual tension as catalyst and amused observer, Challengers breaks from the tradition. Zendaya (Euphoria, Dune) plays Tasha, a former tennis champ who coaches and has married Art (Mike Faist), a rising star a US Open away from total triumph. Competing against him on the court and in love is Patrick (Josh O’Connor, God’s Own Country), a boarding school chum, competitor, and former best friend. In the hands of Luca Guadaginino (Bones and All, Call Me By Your Name) Challengers is closer to Easy Living (1937) than Any Given Sunday: a film where the three leads are equally smart and hot and talented.
A conflicted horndog himself, Guadagnino seems to have absorbed James Ivory’s admonishments. No longer does his camera prissily move away; the camera’s on the edge of the increasingly deluxe hotel beds watching these young actors writhe. Justin Kuritzkes’ flashback structure and Marco Costa’s witty editing maintain the suspense: it’s set in the pre-COVID world of 2019 New Rochelle, but flashes back to 2009 when they all meet at the junior US Open, then forward to the 2011 Atlanta Open. Guadagnino courts the daft. In his world college students will blast Nelly’s libidinous “Hot in Herre” and David Bowie’s wilted 1987 obscurity “Time Will Crawl” at parties. He tries his damnedest to wring the familiar from the final match between Patrick and Art, the film’s bookends: first with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ blaring synthesizer score, then with slo-mo. It’s as if he can’t bear to let go of his characters and he hopes the audience agrees. Mild in themselves, these formal experiments matter in an Amazon MGM Studios release that topped the weekend box office.
Towering over all is Zendaya, the star and co-producer partially responsible for getting Challengers made. The audience has to believe Art and Philip when as regrettably haired young men during the Bush II administration they praise her as the hottest woman they’ve ever seen. Guadagnino agrees, rewarding her with low angle shots that emphasize her dominance. For Tasha, who were it not for a bad accident would’ve been a tennis contender herself, winning isn’t a drug, it’s an ethos. If it means she must toggle between Patrick and Art, so be it. And it’s not as if she doesn’t get off on being the subject of desire — early in the picture she admits that she does “take so much care” of her “little white boys.” She does put up a nominal resistance. “I’m not a home-wrecker,” she warns them. “It’s an open relationship,” Art jokes. This conception of the character meshes with Zendaya’s screen presence: detached, wary, self-amused. I don’t think these are flaws — plainly this is how she wants the audience to regard her — but there’s a sense in which she holds something back (Angelica Jade Bastién, in a dialogue with Matt Zoller Seitz about the film, agrees). The range of her talent is unknown because she hasn’t shown it to us. Given how the industry treats its Black actors maybe Zendaya, a Disney vet, manipulates her enigmas for the sake of sustaining a career arc.
In the tradition of Pat and Mike and any number of Ron Shelton films, Challengers asks audiences to salivate over two man-children who’d rather kill each other on the court than fuck each other in bed. Imagine if the young Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins had tongued each other in Bull Durham. Actually, it’s not clear Patrick and Art are gay or even dig each other; the homosocial world of casual nudity in steam rooms and locker rooms and ass-slapping on the field of combat, plus this century’s increased awareness of male-male sexual tension, allows the combatants to dangle the possibility of sex as easily as Guadagnino films the droplets of sweat dangling from their noses. Promising to exchange numbers with the victor of the next morning’s match on the night she meets the boys, Tasha visits their filthy hotel room (remember when smoking was allowed in them?), engages in flirty banter on that repulsive carpet — cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom leers at O’Connor and Faist’s beautifully toned thighs and feet — and, one at a time, makes out with Art and Patrick, in that order, before drawing back to watch them go at it. Even more explicit is a churros scene told entirely in closeup: affectionate and competitive, down to the way Art wipes the sugar from Patrick’s cheek. Ridiculous, of course, like most erotic fantasias seen rather than experienced.
Like Civil War, Challengers is the second consecutive American box office hit not based on an existing IP; and, like Civil War, Challengers elides the class-based and race-based discussions it starts. Men of privilege, Art and Patrick have the lope of aristocrats. When we see a bathrobe-clad Art lounging in his suite at the New Rochelle Ritz-Carlton it’s as if he participated in a successful restoration, the intervening years of roadside motel hell gone. Patrick, down on his luck, has to pick up women on Tinder who’ll let him crash at their place in exchange for sleeping with them (scrolling through prospects Patrick lingers on a gay dude before quickly passing). Besides what the audience is told about Tasha’s exemplary academic career at Stanford her background is a mystery: she has no life apart from being a tennis obsessive, as a ham-handed exchange with her daughter underlines (one of those mommy’s-always-thinking-about-tennis lines that one comes to expect from these efforts). She has no life except as the locus of a love triangle. How does she feel about motherhood? Was there a sense of loss after her injury ended her career? A dark hint in the 2006 timeline in answer to a question about why she didn’t go to boarding school is as much as the script allows, and Zendaya offers no hues or shades.
Still, let me acknowledge the achievement of Challengers. An American sex romp without guilt and without (many) script explainers. A young woman of color manipulating two white men who encourage the manipulation. An “adult” movie whose formal titillations complement the sexual ones. Zendaya and O’Connor give performances that my college film course would laud as star-making ones; we’ll see what kind of actor she wants to be. In the meantime savor the last scene before the closing credits: an homage to and parody of every moment of platonic male-male affection in sports films. Remember the titans indeed.
GRADE: A-
Humanizing The Vacuum 