First impressions of Challengers
Luca Guadagnino's luridly entertaining film about a tennis-court love triangle takes us somewhere few movies go. Despite its tangled web (net?) of bad behavior, I'm delighted by its unexpected wisdom.
If you’ve seen the trailer or read reviews for the new film from director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, you know the premise:
Challengers is, on its surface, a twisted saga of two competitive tennis players who admire each other to the point of homoeroticism but who bond and eventually go to war over a woman who enchants them both. And she’s enchanting them on purpose, with devious intentions of her own.
This kind of nastiness has a significant Hollywood legacy that has me reminiscing about one of my favorite comedies of the late 1980s. We might as well call this Dirty Rotten Sweaty Cheating Power-Serving Scoundrels.
You don’t need another detailed synopsis for this one, as half of the film’s compelling hold on audiences comes from its narrative twists and turns.
And you don’t need someone else to praise Zendaya (she’s good here living up to her reputation as one of our most glamorous stars, but doesn’t measure up, in my opinion, to the mesmerizing complexity of her two co-stars).
You’ll find in almost any review you read that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross give the film a compelling electronic score that works wonders. (I actually admire their work on The Social Network more.)
But I'm amazed that very few of the reviews I've seen mention that Josh O'Connor is doing incredible things on big screens in two feature films at the moment. (Go see La Chimera!) He's one of those rare, unconventionally engaging stars that makes his characters seem complex and ruggedly human, and he's on an unlikely Adam Driver-esque ascent right now. He's going to be everywhere soon, and deservedly so. While both he and Mike Faist (who made a strong impression in Spielberg’s West Side Story remake) are committed here in ways that might win them both Oscar nominations next year.
What I find most interesting is now Challengers fits in the weird Amadeus and River Runs Through It genre of movies that ask “Why Is It That Those Who Behave in Self-Destructive and Relationally Self-Sabotaging Ways are the Ones Who Achieve Transcendence in Art?”
And that has a lot to do with how I interpret the last ten climactic seconds, which made me laugh out loud in surprise and delight.
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