Challengers review: 'A lot of sport, a lot of wigs and a lot of sexual tension' in Luca Guadagnino's menage à tennis

Luca Guadagnino's menage à tennis has a lot of sport, a lot of wigs and a lot of sexual tension. It has three amazingly talented actors, with Zendaya as one point in a shifting romantic triangle, and Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist as the men competing for her affection. And Guadagnino's previous dazzling depictions of romance include a gay teenager's first love in Call Me by Your Name (2017) and young cannibals in Bones and All (2022), so the pieces are all in place here for an intense, erotic drama set in the world of professional tennis. Yet Challengers feels more like a film trying to be those things than one that achieves its goal. Perfectly pleasant to watch, it never becomes thoroughly engrossing, as the characters often slip from enigmatic to thinly-written. It isn't bad, but it is underwhelming.

Challengers was meant to open the Venice Film Festival last September, but was pulled due to the actors' strike. It's easy to see why that made sense. The actors keep the film going, at times by sheer magnetic on-screen presence even when the screenplay lets them down.

The story begins in 2019, with former best friends Art (Faist, Riff in West Side Story) and Patrick (O'Connor, Charles as a young man in The Crown) now professional players in slumps, entered in a second-tier Challenger tournament in suburban New York. Art, rich from his previous success, needs to restore his confidence. Patrick, who comes from a privileged family yet is obstinately sleeping in his car, needs a win to qualify for bigger tournaments. Zendaya, who proved how good she can be in Euphoria, plays Tashi, a teenage phenomenon as a player until she was injured. Now she is Art's wife and coach, but it doesn't sound great for them when he says "Hey, I love you" and she coolly says "Yeah, I know".

The film flashes back and forth in time, revealing their tangled history while heading toward the inevitable final match between the two rivals. That structure sounds promising, but here it simply slows the momentum. The scenes set 13 years before, when Tashi and the men meet at a juniors tournament, are the liveliest, with the actors at ease in the roles. Patrick is the charmer with a roguish smile, which O'Connor uses to good effect throughout the film. His character also has the most irreverent lines, adding a dash of humour. Art is the sensitive, understanding type, but Faist shows that he's not a pushover. Zendaya is especially nuanced when playing the younger Tashi, who seems like the most wholesome teenager around, but is actually daring and wily. When the men invite her to their shared hotel room, she goes.

Challengers

The trailer makes a point of showing the three of them sitting on a bed, kissing, and in the film that scene works extremely well to set up tension, as we wonder how far any of them will go. Fair warning: that teasing sexuality is an anomaly, not the norm. Remember, Guadagnino is the director who put Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in bed together in Call Me by Your Name, then discreetly turned the camera to look out the window at a tree.

In one of the screenplay's shrewdest turns, Tashi sets up a contest that would have been thoroughly toxic if one of the men had suggested it. Art and Patrick are set to play against each other the next day, and whoever wins will get her phone number, she says. It's the kind of subversive, unexpected twist the film could have used much more of.  A few years later, Tashi is in college, where she suffers her career-changing injury, Patrick is her boyfriend and Art is pining away. O'Connor told Empire magazine about the film, "The tennis is the sex", which is a great quote, and also... no. The tennis is the tennis and the sex is the sex. They never really come together, even when Tashi starts talking about tennis when she's beginning to have sex with Patrick in her dorm room. But there is a definite electricity between Tashi and bad-boy Patrick that she does not have with safe, good-guy Art.

The actors dash around the tennis court, but it is kind of shocking that Guadagnino uses some stale sports-movie tropes, including a slo-mo walk down a corridor to the court outside, and spectators at a match turning their heads right then left then right again in unison. The tropes may be used knowingly but they still look clichéd. And there is a thunderous Thwack! whenever anyone hits a tennis ball. One of the best surprises turns out to be the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, a propulsive techno score that does a lot of the work to keep the tennis scenes moving.

As the years go on there is betrayal and subterfuge all around, in scenes that surface here and there almost glancingly. More of the psychological intrigue would have helped. And the liveliness of the early scenes dissipates. By the end, Art is a depressed noodle. Zendaya spends the final stretch looking stern, although she does play the last tricky scenes very well, as we are led to question what Tashi's motives are when she makes another audacious move.

In the last tennis match, the camera swishes around so fast the screen looks like an abstract image. For a few enlivening seconds, there is a glimpse of a bolder, better version of Challengers lurking behind the competent, uninspired film we have.

-bbc