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I it had been a week and a half since they had seen each other Contenders on the verge of throwing a missile-busting, profanity-spewing, McEnroe-esque outburst. Does Hawkeye work? Didn’t they see it? How, for a grueling Macht-Isner length of huffing and puffing, did virtually every one of the wild swings taken by Luca Guadagnino’s film miss its mark and land by a country mile? Four star reviews? Five star reviews? Come on, fellow critics. You can’t be serious.
Some points I will admit as indisputable. The film is a box office champ. And it’s pure internet fire, movie more memorable than even St. Saltburn. There are clear generational issues: I can see why excitable younger viewers who grew up in mostly genderless cinema fell so hard for the film’s sweat-splattered and heavily artificial sophistication. It’s my senior tour mates who I look at with my hands on my hips, an expression of disbelief. The film they politely applauded strikes me not so much as a modern classic as another sign of the ongoing infantilization of American cinema: a remake of Jules and Jim from Doll Babies.
Perhaps some viewers were swayed by the spirit of condescension fostered by the film’s on-screen judge, who handed out code violations like candy. (In actual tennis, these breaches of court decorum have consequences: losing entire games and matches. Not so in Luke-land.) Swallow them and you might overlook how none of the film’s leading men are as convincing as Whey. .bulky athletes seen strutting around America’s minor tennis courts. Even at their most drained, Art (Mike Feist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) look like half-assed nerds from a thousand other teen comedies, laughing at their own silly masturbation stories.
And then there is Zendaya issue. Zendaya has been convincing in many roles in her young life—brand ambassador, best-dressed, moving MJ amid the noisy mechanics of the Spider-Man movies—and remains one of our better-qualified girls in IT. The perk of being an IT girl is that you get first dibs on every scenario going around Hollywood; the downside is taking on roles for which you are not comparably qualified – working mother, for example. The film acknowledges this by guiltily sneaking Tashi’s daughter Lily (AJ Lister) out of sight with an iPad full of Bluey. Make way for Uncle Luke’s Polysexual Fun Times, no strings attached.
Lily is where the Challengers lost everything for me: game, set and match. Yes, it goes for a quick escape from reality, but even at the end of the 20th century – the moment of Bull Durham in 1988 and the Tin Cup in 1996 – one can imagine the studios supporting a sporting comedy about the very real struggles , related to balancing top-level competition, fame, and parenthood. (A movie that better captures the challenges that, say, Serena Williams faced in the later years of her illustrious court career.) But the Challengers don’t care about Lily, and they hardly seem to care about her mother any more, except as a means of drawing the boys together and an excited crowd indoors.
Which brings us to the much vaunted sex. Or Challengers’ limited take on it, performative and sympathetic, as it appeared to me: carefully choreographed and intimately coordinated, except for real passion. Kisses; you kiss me now you two kiss. These are less sex scenes than exaggerated make-out sessions: kids playing rocket spinners. The fresh face of the Challengers is the one usually used to push khaki and cola in prime-time promos; much of the film really looks like a tennis-themed campaign for a fashion, jewelry, or perfume line. Sex still sells, even in this watered-down, 12A-adjacent form.
Guadagnino remains a great ad man, and his uncanny gift for overcompensation is almost enough to forgive his many bad calls as a director. Amid the climactic whirlwind, the film’s abundant, self-generated hot air lifts every last fast-food wrapper dropped onto an American sidewalk; he pushes us around the tennis court like we have Slazenger stamped on our behinds. At least here, Challengers gets properly pornographic, with grabby angles and cuts, POV fist-pumping, and a punchy (read: terrible) Reznor-Ross score. Sweat drips like semen. But there’s no subtlety or romance, no sign of change or B-play: this is Boris Becker in the broom closet, pre-bankruptcy. Boom Boom; this is your share.
The excited online chatter reflects the desire for more. How does this Justin Kuritzks-scripted group tie in with last year’s Past Lives , written and directed by Kuritzks’ wife, Celine Song? Problems a lot? Yet the Kuritzkes and Song clearly have something in common: a weakness for thin characters who barely hold water outside the context of their own secondary triangulations. Past lives crafted elegantly empty vessels for us to fill with emotional memories of our own what-ifs; the hollow bodies of the Challengers gain fullness only after consuming the viewer’s passion. Never forget: Kuritzkes’ replacement on Past Lives is the author of a novel called Boner. The punning title of Challengers is also positioning, a game that must be considered large and transgressive in what it depicts. But another title suggests itself: Balls.
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