challengers, voyeurism, and a good f*cking game
the truths of tennis are the truths of life
i love talking about tennis. what else is there to talk about than the epic highs and lows of tennis? tennis is love and obsession and passion. tennis is patrick the bad boy with asshole frequencies, art the pathetic yearner who most likely whimpers during sex, and tashi the tyrant pr-attuned prodigy whose days of being an athlete are numbered following a career-ending injury.
until now, hollywood has scrambled and failed to secure the recipe behind a true love triangle. a sometimes toxic, often all-consuming love affair where the arrows pointing from a to b to c are in continuous motion. the habitual love angle features one person on the receiving end of two people’s yearning. no, no. everyone must be emotionally involved. and what better way to portray the sickening commitment of love triangles than through the rules of tennis?
luca guadagnino’s challengers—which is now, officially, his highest grossing film—cinematically captures the appeal of sport media’s depiction of intimacy fueled by rivalry and (un)intended queerness. minor notes, all praise.
guadagnino is, dare i say, the pioneer of the velocity editing style we see today. he set the foundation with timmy’s lil dance scene in call me by your name. and he must love a lil dance glowing with blue light and blue tones, because he’s got zendaya white girl dancing to hot in herre—to which she clears up in an interview: another song was playing during her take. had she known the song, she would’ve danced differently.
thank you zendaya for getting ahead of the ain’t got rhythm rumors.
when it comes to the score, we are given a signal for two things. the first being a sense of urgency clawing its way from house and techno music. the second being a cue for a match of verbal wit. the score is obvious, bolstering, and addicting. a flashing warning sign with no regard for subtlety.
every action, argument, conversation, and plea for something more attests to tashi’s philosophy that tennis is everything. tennis is her first love. tennis determines how she sees the world, where she finds the truth, and in turn, how she plays it.
it being life; it being the game. it being tennis, metaphorically and literally.
banter suggests a sense of playfulness to a biting exchange. light teasing in the nature of being good. this is what tashi/art/patrick see in each other in the height of their youth and first meeting. something magnetic that has each angle of their love triangle drawing in closer and closer. but without their youth backing them, their banter twists venomously into mind games—into knowing each other so well that intimate fondness easily fuels brutal clashes. a war of words. of driving a knife into the right insecurity to make each other feel the hurt worse.
“i don’t matter?”
“not even to the most obsessive tennis fan in the world.”
“we’re not talking about tennis.”
“what the fuck else do i have to talk to you about?”
challengers, call me by your name, and bones and all create “the big three” of guadagnino’s filmography. all prolific in some kind of way. all characterized by their emotional complexity, eroticism, and riveting visuals.
guadagnino is dead set on turning the critic/viewer/layman into a voyeur. the gratification he receives from the consumption of his art is not always tied to sexual desire as the definition implies. the film!voyeur is swayed by some kind of reckoning. the themes, the motifs, the realizations that will act as the basis of what every edit, review, and discourse will find merit within.
for challengers, the reckoning comes from the fact that the game is never over. the camera pans back and forth, back and forth between fights and matches. there’s a narrative dominance employed by this panning. the film requires our complete, rapt attention.
tashi/patrick/art will always be players. in defining their dynamic within the last twenty minutes—which might just be my favorite goosebump-inducing ending, ever—the layers and walls we’ve seen each character put up are peeled away as the score screams and tensions heighten. for three people on the defensive for a majority of the film, it isn’t until we are back on court, back where everything matters, that we see them quickly and immediately stripped down to the bare bones of their desire.
tashi is not the maneater the trailer cuts her out to be. there’s mischief to her actions, sure, but we also watch the manner to which she has to relinquish control. from the story her haircuts reveal as time passes to the state of her psyche as she is doomed to live vicariously though the boys to capture even an ounce of what the sport meant to her.
it would be too easy to summarize the trio’s dynamic as an art loves tashi/patrick loves art/tashi loves tennis situation. that is not what makes it messy or complex. the trio complete each other. they destroy each other. all good things come in three.
tashi makes her desires clear from the very beginning of the movie. tennis is her number one priority. before meeting her, the boys play as doubles partners. but then they start seeing her as this symbol for winning, for love. her heart is the prize, and she’s game—as long as it is entertaining. ambition is not a crime!
art is competitive. the act of winning and tashi’s approval/affection drives him to win, win, win. he presents as the nicer, softer component to ice and fire, but art is just as manipulative on and off the court. it’s just hidden under the guise of his malewife tendencies. art loves tennis until it tires him, and that strikes a cord between the relationship he wants to preserve and honoring his own truth.
patrick is thrilled by the chase and game. he loves the fun of it—a true adrenaline junkie. he has the natural talent and backings of a wealthy family to go pro immediately. he acts like a piece of shit purely to call out other people’s bs. he is well versed in the language needed to compete/love/earn tashi and art. without tennis, there is no basis for a relationship.
it isn’t fair to define their relationship until all their names and wants and needs start blurring as one. there’s a shot i particularly adore where tashi is seated during patrick vs art’s match, unmoved, as still as the median splitting the boys apart. everyone around her is snapping their head left to right, left to right. it takes the viewer becoming the tennis ball waiting to be dropped for her to start tracking the ball, at the edge of her seat. the boys have a moment of clarity, with the tennis ball acting as chekhov’s gun. i remember how intently the theater waited with bated breath.
and then the jump. the music. the scream. fade to black.
the fate of the throuple hinges on the all-consuming passion shared within their triangle. the winner matters less than the fact that they re-united over a fucking good game of tennis, one deserving of a guttural proof of satisfaction. it’s in this final moment that we finally see tennis as tashi describes. they went somewhere really beautiful together.
loewe, send me the i told ya shirt abeg ! but also, below, an unserious series of events vs the serious need for diversity & inclusion on creative teams oh gawd.