“Challengers”: Zendaya Shines in Luca Guadagnino’s Intense Tennis Drama

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Zendaya stars as Tashi in director Luca Guadagnino’s
CHALLENGERS
An Amazon MGM Studios film
Photo credit: Niko Tavernise
© 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

It all takes place during an intense tennis match. A match in which much more is at stake than a title and a prize, and throughout the film we will discover what it entails. Challengers (Challengers, 2024) doses the information to continually keep us on the edge of our seats, wanting to know more, spying on each key scene in the characters’ lives. Anticipating each of their moves and adjusting our expectations to each revelation, precisely as if we were playing tennis.

In one of its key scenes, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) describes this sport as a romantic relationship, a strong connection between both players, at a specific time and place in the game. He could well be describing the relationship that Luca Guadagnino establishes with his audience in the movie theater, during the more than two hours that the film lasts. It is a constant back and forth, an experience that takes advantage of all the resources of the audiovisual medium to tell a story that is as exciting as it is immersive.

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Mike Faist stars as Art and Zendaya as Tashi in director Luca Guadagnino’s
CHALLENGERS
An Amazon MGM Studios film
Photo credit: Niko Tavernise
© 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) are rivals both on and off the field, but it wasn’t always that way. Every piece of information we receive changes the power dynamics between them, and in their relationship with Tashi. A love triangle in which she seems to have total control and yet it is nothing more than an illusion, a reflection of her true helplessness. Sexual desire goes in all directions, and Zendaya’s character seems to be the only one to perceive it.

What is disputed on the playing field is not only the love of a woman or sporting success, but the honesty between two lifelong friends who cannot accept each other in their completeness and end up facing their own contradictions. Although at first reading it may seem that sexuality is what gets in the way of this friendship, in reality it is precisely the repression of sexual desire that triggers all conflicts. In the end, male fury turns into frustration and female frustration turns into fury.

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Josh O’Connor stars as Patrick and Zendaya as Tashi in director Luca Guadagnino’s
CHALLENGERS
An Amazon MGM Studios film
Photo credit: Niko Tavernise
© 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

And Guadagnino knows how to sublimate it perfectly in small gestures, looks and even symbolisms present throughout the entire film. Tension and power are played in every angle chosen, in every shot and camera movement, and even in the music, which becomes omnipresent near the end. The soundtrack by the brilliant Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (regular collaborators in David Fincher’s films, a master at generating climates of tension) intensifies every time the characters make a decision that will change everything again.

The final montage turns the dialogues into tennis matches and the tennis matches into dialogues, adding definition to an already perfect script. Justin Kuritzkes (husband of the recent Oscar nominee Céline Song for Lives Past (2023)) chooses a non-linear narrative, through flashbacks placed with the precision of a reverse. Each one explores the different stages in the lives of the three protagonists and how each of their choices influences the present match, in which many things happen at the same time.

By the time the credits roll, it leaves us with the feeling of having witnessed a World Cup final, and with the desire to see it again and pause in each of the master plays.

Match PointPower dynamics are the center of the conflict both on and off the playing field in the new film by the Italian director, who handles the tension with a firm hand and excellent narrative resources.

2024-05-02 21:07:35
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