Recently, many have lamented the disappearance of the erotic thriller from cineplexes in the modern era. The latest film from director Luca Guadagnino may be more thriller than erotic, but it’s the closest we’ve gotten in a bit. Challengers follows Tashi (Zendaya) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), a married couple with Tashi serving as Art’s coach who has transformed her husband from a mediocre player into a world-famous grand slam champion. Art is at a career crossroads, struggling and contemplating retirement, when Tashi makes him play a challenger event to jolt him out of his recent losing streak. Art makes it to the finals and finds himself across the tennis court from the once-promising, now burnt-out Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. The match ends up presenting higher stakes than just the event championship, opening old wounds and reestablishing old connections.
Challengers is a psychological thriller full of tension and intrigue as members of this toxic triangle seek to manipulate one another to varying ends with a bit of love and emotion intertwined with their machinations. Where the film excels in establishing this tension and building audience empathy and intrigue in their love triangle is the structure in which the story of how their conflict came to be is established. The film begins with two tennis pros facing off the in the final of a challenger event with the camera making a dolly zoom into the face of a woman in sunglasses intently observing the match. From there, we flashback to various points in the lives of Art and Tashi, their family life, and the tension surrounding how Tashi guides Art through his career and pressures him to become a better player. As we flash forward and backward through time, we’re slowly introduced to Art and Patrick’s friendship, how they met Tashi, and how their triangle came to be. It’s slow drip storytelling that reveals the characters’ backstories piece by piece gradually pulling in the audience, making them follow a trail of breadcrumbs that lead right into the film’s emotionally explosive finale that’s played out in a dialogue sparse tennis match.
This buildup strengthens what could have been a ho hum story about a love triangle, fostering intrigue and creating investment in the audience as it has to wait to get the full picture, but is given just enough information to motivate them to figurately keep turning the pages on the story. This strategy is aided by believable chemistry between Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor, all of whom provide quality performances and sell the history, emotion, and tension between the trio. Zendaya is slick and calculating as the manipulative Tashi, making the perfect foil to O’Connor’s equally devious Patrick.
Guadagnino and director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom employ striking camera work to bring the action on the tennis courts alive, culminating in an epic final showdown between the two friends turned rivals that uses cinematography to accentuate and strengthen the tension and drama established by the story. The audience is treated to sweep angles from above and below the court and at one point, the camera’s perspective even switches to that of the ball as it goes back and forth between the two competitors. In service to visual storytelling, the camera is used to show the final round matchup from the first person perspective of Art and Patrick respectively, bringing the audience directly onto the court and into the shoes of a high level professional athlete and the intensity and athleticism of high level tennis. The shaky camera vantage point is partly disorienting which is fascinating to watch, but also allows the audience to feel what it’s like to be in their shoes physically after already being shown the emotion behind the contest. It makes for an additional level of immersion that strengthens the impact of the film overall.
While story itself doesn’t read on its surface as anything more than the typical love triangle thriller, Luca Guadagnino employs skillful technique in story structure, cinematography, and a pulsating house music score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to heighten the tension and anxiety in a way that elevates the screenplay. Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor bounce off of each other well and bring the characters’ emotions and stories to life. Challengers is a throwback thriller with the right 90s vibes that make it an engaging watch.
Image: Amazon MGM Studios
