‘Challengers’ movie review: Zendaya serves an ace in Luca Guadagnino’s thirsty tennis drama

The stories of three young tennis prodigies comes to a head during a low-stakes but high-tension late-career match in Challengers, opening this weekend in Prague cinemas and worldwide. Enhanced by some innovative filmmaking tricks from director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) and a pulse-pounding soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, this is an unexpectedly riveting sports drama that brilliantly utilizes its central match as an allegory for repressed sexual tension.

That match, at least initially, feels like it couldn’t be less consequential: Challengers opens in New Rochelle, New York at the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger tournament, where Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) takes on Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) for the prize pot of all of $7,000.

But as Art’s wife Tashi (Zendaya) observes both players from the sidelines, in a slow-zoom that recalls Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, it’s clear that there’s far more at play here than the action on the court. Challengers soon splits into three narratives to tell the intertwined backstories of these three characters, from the match itself to a few weeks and 13 years before.

Earlier in 2022, Tashi enters her 33-year-old husband in the low-stakes New Rochelle tournament to build his confidence before a late-career run at the U.S. Open, the only major title he has yet to claim. Meanwhile, down-and-out Zweig can’t even pay for his motel in New Rochelle, and hits up Tinder for the benefit of a bed to sleep in during the tournament.

Back in 2009, Zweig and Donaldson were Fire & Ice: doubles champions on the junior circuit and the best of friends. But Zendaya‘s Tashi – herself a budding tennis star – comes between them in a series of sexually escalating scenes that culminates in a near-threesome, complete with a kiss between the two boys that Tashi studiously observes with keen awareness of the power she wields over them.

Back in New Rochelle, 13 years of sexual tension between these three characters culminates as the two boys, now men, face each other on the court. Tashi again finds herself in the role of observer, but now she’s even more invested in the relationship than the participants themselves.

Zendaya will be the big draw for most audiences in Challengers, and a fittingly radiant object of affection for her male co-stars; a dominant early match against a rival junior contender showcases her beaming screen presence. But Faist and O’Connor match their co-star’s appeal, and kudos to all three actors for convincingly portraying these characters as both teenagers and early-thirtysomethings.

For cinephiles, meanwhile, the big draw in Challengers is Guadagnino’s handling of the material, which he tackles with the same kind of over-the-top passion that he brought to his Suspiria remake. Scenes on the court are filled with inventive dolly-and-crane camerawork that crawls around the court and over the line judge, point-of-view shots from the perspective of the tennis ball (!), and even glass-floor trickery that showcases the action from beneath the court.

Climactic scenes between Tashi and Zweig are set during a windstorm, brought to dramatic life through wide shots of the characters isolated against the backdrop of New Rochelle at night, with no expense spared in blowing paper trash about the screen. These intimate character moments are conveyed in such vivid cinematic terms that they recall the climax of Back to the Future.

Completing the transformation from what might otherwise be a low-key sports drama into a full audiovisual experience is a stimulating EDM soundtrack that really gets the blood pumping. Director Guadagnino gives the soundtrack full play, often times turning the movie into a music video, and Reznor and Ross (who previously worked with David Fincher on films like Gone Girl and The Social Network) hit a career pinnacle to deliver one of the all-time great motion picture soundtracks.

If there’s one thing holding Challengers itself back from the same level of greatness, it’s that underneath all the razzle-dazzle visuals and music this is a relatively straightforward story, and not exactly a profound one. Despite innovation within the non-linear narrative itself, there’s a certain point in which we simply get it, and the movie has nowhere to go but charm us on a surface level.

When the surface is so charming, however, it’s tough to complain. As a rare original, adult drama poised to take on the world box office and capture the contemporary zeitgeist, Challengers deserves all the praise it’s going to get. Forget the latest superhero movie; this is one that you really want to see on the big screen.