Challengers ★★½

Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) are childhood best friends. They both pursue a career in professional tennis and their futures look bright after winning the junior doubles title at the US Open. After the match, they meet Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a tennis prodigy who instantly has stolen the boys’ affections. They are smitten (and awkward) with Tashi and Tashi has some level of interest in the boys. She tells Patrick and Art that she will give her phone number to whoever wins the junior singles finals the next day, a match where Patrick and Art face each other as opponents that sets the stage for them to become adversaries.

For Tashi, tennis is everything. It means even more to her than it does to Patrick and Art despite their mutual talent. Tashi is unable to think about anything in life without making some comparison to tennis; she tells Patrick and Art that she views tennis itself as a moment in time where an indescribable connection forms between two players. Tennis is transcendent. Life is but the period of time in between matches. It’s rare that you meet someone so vivacious and full of life, yet mentally they couldn’t be further distanced from the present. This is Tashi.

Meeting Tashi has placed Patrick and Art on diverging paths. The differences between the two become emphasized. Patrick is cunning, the more scrappy of the two, and his intrinsic skill in tennis wins him the match against Art and earns him Tashi’s phone number. Art is the more polished and becomes the more accomplished of the two, donning university-branded clothing as he and Tashi choose to attend Stanford University while Patrick struggles in his professional career. Patrick’s athletic clothing gets more worn and ragged as time goes by while Art and Tashi train and enjoy the comforts of their prestigious university. When Patrick visits Tashi, the two in a relationship after Patrick’s win in the singles match, the metaphorical match between Patrick and Art for Tashi’s affection truly begins as Tashi experiences a personal crisis that threatens her tennis career.

Challengers builds to the outcome of this match, which becomes quite literally a tennis match between Patrick and Art at a Challenger event in New Rochelle, New York a decade later. At this point in their lives, Tashi and Art are married and she vicariously lives her life through his tennis career. Art is at the height of his career, but has recently struggled to perform following an injury. Friction forms between Art and Tashi – his coach and wife – as Art continues to train and pursue the US Open title. The outcome of Art’s play shouldn’t have an impact on his marriage with Tashi, but to Tashi it does. And Patrick knows this.

Challengers is a captivating film about the changing relationship between Patrick and Art and Tashi, and the film relishes in strong performances from O’Connor, Faist, and Zendaya. The film’s drama won’t lose your focus for a second, though director Luca Guadagnino seems to be skeptical that a story centering around tennis and romance has appeal to filmgoers today. Guadagnino has continued his collaborations with DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom who has taken out every tool in the cinematographer’s toolbox and has used it here as well as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who compose the pulsating and rhythmic soundtrack to the film. Challengers even takes a non-linear approach to film editing as the film cuts between the Challenger match and earlier events, and it wouldn’t be illogical to liken the editing to a tennis match, cutting between present and past as the ball passes over the net.

All of this effort to force a film about tennis to be interesting ultimately comes at a distraction. Challengers would be entertaining without slow-motion shots and dizzying special effects. Zendaya is exceptional here and we forget how accomplished she is as an actress since her performances in this years’ Challengers and Dune: Part Two are so distinct and fitting to the stories told. Likewise, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist are fully engrossed in their roles as Patrick and Art, and convey non-verbal jealousy and animosity with tension that lifts off the screen. 

Challengers is a film that seemingly does not trust its actors to carry the film, which is a mistake since its story is character-driven. And that’s not to criticize Mukdeeprom or Reznor or Ross – Challengers has a number of exceptional shots, and Reznor & Ross deliver one of their best soundtracks in years. Their contributions just aren’t in service of the film’s narrative, and neither is the film’s sound mixing. An encompassing example of this occurs when the film builds to the conclusion of the tennis match between Patrick and Art. The match is close – too close – and Tashi watches in anticipation. As the final point is scored, her yell should be the most striking part of the scene, though its effect is diminished by the ten minutes of slow motion, dripping beads of sweat, and booming theater audio that preceded it.

For Tashi, the outcome of the match affirms her belief in an intense connection formed between opposing tennis players. If everything must service tennis, then her, Patrick, Art, and the entangled relationships formed between them over the years have built up to an incomparable match.