Italian director Luca Guadagnino continued his streak of amazing films this April with the release of “Challengers,” a story surrounding three tennis player and their love triangle. The movie focuses on themes of competition, love, and sex. With household names like Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, the film received both critical and commercial success.
The director of “Call me by your name” and “Bones and All” continued with his amazing cinematography and beautifully composed shots that have been a trademark characteristic of his films. While he played with nature a lot more in other films, his new camera technique and the way he plays with the geometry and symmetry of the tennis courts truly sets the movie on a different level, especially with how mundane it could have been if directed by anyone else.
One of the themes that the movie portrays the most is sexuality, not a movie to see with parents, but it has a vastly different way of describing this theme, as it does not have any “in the face” scenes. Still, it does have what I believe to be even more sensual scenes with the number of small acts and touches that signify the intimate relationships between our characters. You can clearly tell one of the characters likes another one in this love triangle just by the small comments and ways of acting when around one another.
This takes me to the relationship aspect of the movie which is fully combined with the competitive side of tennis and an amazing metaphor for which the movie bases its premise in. We have two childhood friends, Patrick and Art, who we can see as partners when playing tennis earlier in their lives and rivals in the same sport later. As well as Tashi, the best player in her field, popular and with sponsorship deals with huge brands like Adidas, basically being able to partake in this sport her whole life, who sadly suffered an injury and is unable to proceed with her passion.
The way in which these character’s stories and hardships in tennis translates fully to how they all act towards each other, and how they see their relationships, is an amazing tool used by Guadagnino. Tashi always shows us that she sees all her relationships as a tennis game, and even mentions it in moments where nothing of that sort would be talked about, such as a romantic dinner. This passion of hers that she can no longer play infiltrates everything in her life and makes the way she engages with other characters remarkably interesting. While Patrick and Art, being the only two able to keep playing tennis, see tennis as both a competition but also the tool to maintain Tashi, which is the ultimate goal for both Patrick and Art, even if it’s underneath their other emotions.
Another aspect I really enjoyed was that the film had an actual love triangle. In many romance films, whenever they mention a love triangle is both guys falling in love with the girl and competing to get her, but not this movie. Even if both male characters never express in words the feelings they have, it is told by how they act towards each other, with very intimate ways of physical touch and eye contact, as well as the mention that one of them is bisexual.
Finally, the soundtrack in this film is impeccable. Being such an intense film both in the sports and relationships scenes, the music produced by composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross adds another layer to the film and is even used as a tool to show when the “game” referring sometimes to the actual tennis field but sometimes about the game of love, with the song “Challengers” playing in different scenes.
Challengers has been the summer film of the year, and I recommend it fully to anyone reading this article. Available now on Amazon Prime.
