Challengers

Your pupils dilate. Adrenaline courses through your veins. Treznor and Ross' score reverberates through your skull. You finally let out a breath that you didn't realize you had been holding in for the past who knows how long? And it happens every time you experience those last fifteen minutes. Challengers is completely unlike every other Guadagnino movie, both before and after. It disregards the dream-like state that all of the auteur's other works thrive in. It trades away his trademark lingering shots for quick cuts, pans and cross-fades. It does away with the careful, intimate eroticism for something far more aggressive. Yet, still, it feels like Guadagnino in every sense of that descriptor; it's arguably his best.