Challengers tells a sports story about tennis and a trio of people who live in that world. The tennis, the love, the competition, the ambition, and the sex all triangles around Zendaya as Tashi. Tashi is a tennis great who injures her knee and becomes a coach.
Challengers only exists because of Tashi. The two men around her are Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor).
This threesome meet in high school. Tashi understands the relationship between Art and Patrick better than they do themselves. Both of them fall for her at the same time. She says she’s not a homewrecker. Instead of coming between them or joining them in a threesome, she suckers them into acting on their own feelings for each other.
She was wise beyond her years. The two men never caught up with her in terms of wisdom or anything else.
Do the fellas feel love or hate for each other? From the moment Tashi becomes the goal for both of them they compete for her attention. They compete in her bed and on the tennis court.
As a coach, Tashi considers Art the better player. She marries him and coaches him to the top. Patrick continues to affect that relationship.
The story jumps around between past and present as the lives of these three are explored. There’s plenty of drama and plenty of tennis. The match in the present features a successful Art vs. a down on his luck Patrick, with Tashi watching from the sidelines as the goddess who will determine their fates.
The endless tennis was shot and edited in fascinating ways. Above, below, as the ball, as the racket. Fast moves, slow moves, lots of grunting and strain. Buckets of sweat, sweat beyond any human ability to sweat. Secret signals between Art and Patrick about who had Tashi last. I was impressed with the various ways they found to show the tennis matches. Luca Guadagnino directed this sports story.
Zendaya is well known and has been in 50+ movies, but this is the first time I’ve watched closely as she worked. The three main characters were all brilliant, but Zendaya stood out for her performance. I especially enjoyed her when she was disgusted and angry with these two men who hung on her every move and whim. All she really cared about was tennis. When her own career as a player was destroyed, she transferred all that energy to one or the other of the men. It only fulfilled her ambition and love of the game part of the time.
The ending is ambiguous. We don’t know who wins the final match or who Tashi might end up with. But the three of them have a moment of connection that felt like where the movie was headed all along. I thought it circled back to the moment when very young Tashi explained to the two green young men that tennis was a relationship.
You can see this one on Prime Video.
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