Challengers

Holy shit, Luca did it again. The triangle between Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor is one of the most compelling stories about love and friendship and the tenuous lines between those two things and hate that I have seen put to film for the longest time. The bromance between Art and Patrick, played by Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor respectively, feels so natural, so picture perfect, that even though the marketing puts the tension of a love triangle right in the middle of it all, the presence of Tashi, played by Zendaya, isn’t an immediate looming threat but rather an invitation for that relationship to potentially deepen. There’s something to be said about the slight homoeroticism of two guys being into the same girl! Faist and O’Connor’s acting is great, with Guadagnino’s camera capturing the subtleties of their performances. Every little smirk and intense stare is granted even more weight and gravity thanks to the way shots are composed. The breaks from the masks they put on are so rich with emotion, incredibly so, and is only matched by Zendaya who plays the role of a seemingly cold and calculating person with immense flaws and insecurities of her own to a perfect t. Just like his other work, Guadagnino has such a great knack for knowing exactly how to capture the most minute changes in emotional state, making every single moment, every single time a character is conflicted, every single time a character changes their mind, hit even harder. The way that the jumps in time come with changes in how tennis is portrayed is so brilliant as well. It so wonderfully supports Tashi’s early thesis that the game of tennis is a relationship. Not a single scene is wasted. Everything stacks upon one another to where even when you know what is going to happen, you are desperately hoping it doesn’t. That’s magic. By the end of the film the audience is so familiar with the tiniest details of how characters emote and move that the climactic tennis bout has the energy of a long-needed screaming match, one where people react before they even realize what they’re feeling. Fucking wonderful.