Year of Release: 2024
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist, Nada Despotovich, Naheem Garcia, Darnell Appling, Jake Jensen
Genre: Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 7
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
The wonderful Luca Guadagnino is back, following the solid but underrated "Bones and All". "Challengers" which was originally slated to premiere in 2023, eventually premiered in April of 2024 and has since become the biggest commercial success in the director's career (at least thus far). The film is written by Justin Kuritzkes, and focuses its attention on three central characters. Those characters are Tashi Duncan, Patrick Zweig, and Art Donaldson. They all meet in 2006 when Patrick and Art win the boys' junior doubles tennis match at the US Open, and where they spot Tashi, then a rising tennis star. They flirt with each other and are about to consummate their tryst, when Tashi decides to leave. Tashi and Patrick eventually start a relationship, one that is strained by their different agendas, something that leads to a break up at the same time she suffers a serious injury and is forced to give up her dreams of playing tennis. Tashi and Art reconnect a few years later and she becomes his coach and they start a romantic relationship as well. In 2019 Tashi and Art have solidified his career, have a young daughter, but he is struggling to achieve a career Grand Slam due to injuries and his age. Hoping to reinforce Art's self confidence, Tashi enrolls him in a Challenger event , coincidentally one where Patrick is also playing. Patrick's career hasn't flourished quite as much, and he basically lives from his winnings from lower circuits. Patrick still has feelings for Tashi, and asks her to consider training him instead, whereas she wants him to throw the game in Art's favor.
Luca Guadagnino is one of the most interesting and accomplished film directors working these days. His "I Am Love" is to this day, at least in my opinion, one of the best films of the 2010s. He has been able to craft narratives of authentic romanticism, where carnality walks hand in hand with characters realizing that while love does give new meaning to their lives, at times the choices they end making are not driven by those sentiments, but by a calculated need to lead life in a different direction. A bit like deterring a river from its natural flow, and in a different direction (such was the case of the narratives in "Call me By Your Name" and even "Bones and All"). That theme comes across in "Challengers" as well, where the romantic triangle between these characters, while peppered with trysts and lust, it also feels not entirely satisfactory resolved for all of them. And the path of life, has taken them in certain directions that has made some of their decisions feel more sensical. Out of all of Mr. Guadagnino's features (including the great remake of Dario Argento's "Suspiria" and the fantastic "A Bigger Splash"), this one feels a bit thinner in terms of the depth of the narrative and of the characters themselves (Art ends up taking a backseat to the dynamics that are happening with Tashi and Patrick, and even they feel solely focused on a specific topic and that is all). The director is able to create an impeccable spin and rhythm to the narrative by making it non-linear, and putting a stylistic perspective in how the tennis shots are captured, but the film does feel a bit more narrower in scope than any of his past endeavors. The cast is equally solid in their performances, and the production team is peerless, including Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cinematography, Merissa Lombardo's production design, and Jonathan Anderson's costumes. It's an entertaining feature, possibly not as finely layered as his prior endeavors, but worth watching nonetheless.
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