Tennis is having a moment. Be it through an uptick in socially distant athletics over the pandemic, Netflix’s Break Point docuseries, the insidious rise of pickleball, or something altogether more mysterious, the USTA reports participation in the sport grew by a staggering 33% from 2020 to 2022. Tournament attendance is likewise breaking records with each passing year. There’s no accounting for vibes.
The sport itself is in an interesting place. With Federer retired, and Djokovic and Nadal navigating the twilight of their careers, a new generation is poised to take over its highest echelons.
Yet in film, the record is spotty. Tennis doesn’t have a Field of Dreams, a Remember the Titans, a Rocky. Then again, tennis isn’t like other sports. Tennis is theatrical, it is personal. It’s sensual. It is not crowded by national and civic narratives. It is two creatures alone on a court, battling themselves as much as their opponents.
Enter Luca Guadagnino. After the critical success and Oscar noms garnered by 2017’s Call Me By Your Name (including a win for Adapted Screenplay), Guadagnino has sidestepped what could have been a pat trajectory. He followed Name in 2018 with a dreamlike, nauseating, and historically rooted remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 classic Suspiria. He then returned in 2022 for another alternative take on horror with Bones and All, a road romance that follows two teenage cannibals. Both were underseen and received mixed reviews. For the record, I championed each.
With Challengers, Guadagnino has stepped away from the world of horror to produce a different kind of film of equal intensity. To do so, he has paired the rising star of tennis with that of Zendaya. Though I believe Challengers will hold up in the rearview, it is a film made very smartly for this moment.
Challengers follows a trio of players: Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor). When the film begins, Art is a world-famous tennis superstar coached by Tashi, his world-famous wife. Tashi has an old knee injury that prevents her from playing, and Art’s glorious career is waning. Patrick, on the other hand, is a nobody. Looking for an easy win to boost his confidence, Art enters a local Challenger event in a small town in New York. Patrick enters as well, sleeping in his car, in desperate need of the $7k prize.
Structurally, Challengers is similar to The First Slam Dunk (an animated basketball movie from last year – see it if you haven’t), in that a single match of tennis spans the length of the film. Over that time, with many flashes backwards and forwards, we learn the origins of the parties at play, and slowly uncover what’s really at stake in the match.
Those origins center around a first meeting, when the three are young champions full of promise at the 2006 US Open juniors’ tournament. Art and Patrick are childhood best friends, at turns awkward and charming, with an unfocused sexual energy that might include each other. They both fall precipitously for the beautiful and driven Tashi, that year’s junior singles champion. What follows is an odd, and oddly innocent, ménage à trois, directed by Tashi. The boys kiss Tashi. The boys kiss each other. Tashi says goodnight.
What ensues is as much Y tu mamá también as it is an earnest sports film. The relationship between the three spans years, and there are intrigues, couplings, and spurning aplenty. All of this comes to a head as Art and Patrick are matched in the finals of the present-day Challenger tournament. We understand from this timeline which guy gets the girl. But the fun resides in coming to know the incisively defined characters, and watching how they change and grow and orbit one another.
Challengers feels special, because amidst a field of morally didactic stories this is a film where no one is the good guy. We get to watch three humans experience desire, loss, and mistakes; then grapple with the lifelong fallout of their kindness and cruelty.
All of this is arranged in a tight, smart screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes. Everyone’s got their heart on their synthetic-fiber sleeves, but it never feels contrived. Moments of setup don’t read as setup, then pack a wallop when they return later in the film.
Zendaya delivers a career best. Tashi is an evolution of her wheelhouse, and she is totally effortless. Faist and O’Connor are equally convincing. Sexy and oafish; maddening and sympathetic. It is impossible to root for either. It is impossible not to root for both.
Scenes which may have come off ponderous or maudlin are launched ahead at breakneck speed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s pounding score. The dance music is virtually unceasing. Tender moments transform into a roguish, nervous thing as characters whisper secrets over stabbing basslines. A true late-career highlight for the pair, it reinforces the basic fact that, despite being many things, Challengers is fun. (There are currently no plans for a physical release of the Challengers original soundtrack, which is a crime.)
Guadagnino’s sentimentality never overreaches. It feels human, despite lavishly staged high drama. The score, the kinetic camera and stylish editing; everything is hyper aestheticized in a way that feels joyous and earnest. As a tennis fan and a Nine Inch Nails fan I may be biased, but I was grinning ear to ear from start to finish.
Ultimately, Challengers is that rarest thing: provocative yet sincere.
Challengers won’t be for everyone; it won’t even be for every tennis fan. But for me, and the way I understand the sport – messy, nervous, energized, human – I think tennis has found its Rocky.
