Challengers (2024)

Dir: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist

A career defining Zendaya umpires the rivalry between tennis stars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, in Luca Guadagnino’s exhilarating romantic sports drama.

After a slow start to the year, 2024’s cinematic backdrop is starting to heat up and the one star who has been front and centre is Zendaya. Despite being on the Hollywood scene for a number of years now, the 27-year-old has rarely been considered to be amongst the more talented actors of her age. With the likes of Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh regularly receiving critical acclaim for their work, Zendaya herself continues to wait in the wings. Since here breakout year in 2017, providing supporting roles in major blockbusters The Greatest Showman and Spider-Man: Homecoming, Zendaya has struggled to land the meaty leading roles to enable her to showcase her acting talent. The undoubtedly talented actor’s breakout dramatic role came in 2019, but for her television work, following the success of hit series Euphoria. The teen drama has ran for two seasons to date and has seen Zendaya awarded for her performance at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and Emmys.

Zendaya would have been hoping to replicate her TV success on the big screen in 2023, with the release of the second part of Denis Villeneuve‘s epic Dune saga, as well as finally landing a significant leading role in ‘Challengers’, the latest project by highly acclaimed Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. Unfortunately, due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes, the young actress has instead had to wait until April 2024 for her hard work to finally pay off.

Dune: Part Two is currently the highest grossing film worldwide in 2024, and has been a huge success with audiences and critics. Having been given a substantially larger role than in the first instalment, Zendaya was able to serve as the emotional core of Denis Villeneuve’s vision, with her strong-willed but sympathetic portrayal of Chani contributing to the film’s exceptional gut-punching finale. It was arguably Zendaya’s strongest big screen performance to date, only for it to be topped only a few weeks later, in what could be a career-defining role in Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Challengers’.

Penned by Justin Kuritzkes, receiving his first screenwriting credit, ‘Challengers’ is a relatively straight-forward story following the inner workings and complications of a love-triangle involving three aspiring tennis prodigies. While the narrative itself is fairly simple, the structure itself is far from it. Told in a non-linear format, the story ping-pongs back and forth between key dates in the lives of the three young tennis stars, with each dramatic and emotional shift in the characters being reflected in an invitational tennis match between Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), taking place in the present day.

Chronologically, ‘Challengers’ first introduces us to the young and naïve Patrick and Art as they win a junior doubles tournament in 2006. Following their victory, the pair begin to flirt with exciting young tennis prospect Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) at a sponsorship party, culminating in an a late night menage a trois. Over the subsequent 13 years the three individuals repeatedly drift closer and further away from each other, culminating in Patrick and Art fighting it out on court at a pivotal turning point in their professional and personal lives.

Following its delay as a result of last year’s strikes, ‘Challengers’ became one of my most highly anticipated movies of 2024, and following strong early buzz coming out of its world premiere in March, I could not have been more excited. It could have easily been a case of setting my expectations up for failure but with the ever-reliable Luca Guadagnino in the director’s chair, the quality was never in doubt. The Sicilian native has well established himself in Hollywood, with his stylistic and often sensual movies regularly earning him acclaim. Despite covering an array of genres in his career, there are always themes of sexuality and emotionally awakening present in Guadagnino’s work. Whether it be coming of age drama, Call Me by Your Name (2017), cannibalistic thriller Bones and All (2022) or even supernatural horror Suspiria (2018), themes of identity sexual discovery are prevalent and ‘Challengers’ is no exception.

Guadagnino is on top form here, creating arguably his most accessible and pleasurable work to date, with his direction along with Marco Costa‘s editing perfectly matching the frenetic time jumping storytelling of Justin Kuritzkes’ script. Known primarily as a playwright, Kuritzkes is the long time partner of Celine Song, who last year made her own cinematic breakthrough with a love-triangle of her own, the sensational biographical drama Past Lives. Not to be upstaged by his wife, Kuritzkes too manages to excel in his first cinematic outing, delivering a genre shifting drama that perfectly balances the slow-burn off-court melodrama with the high intensity back and forth of the critical tennis match at its centre. Most surprisingly of all, there is a good amount of humour throughout the breezy 2-hour runtime, with Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor’s hilarious portrayal of the teenaged and more sexually awkward Art and Patrick being a comedic highlight.

Given her recent acclaim following the release of ‘Dune: Part Two’, there will be plenty of Oscar buzz surrounding Zendaya’s performance here, and rightly so. It is difficult to argue that she he has ever been better, but the same recognition should be given to her co-stars. Regardless of the excellent script and craft on show, it is ultimately the performances and chemistry of the three leads that ‘Challengers’ is reliant. Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist are crucial to this movie’s success and their outstanding individual work is thanks to the co-dependency accurately reflected in their on-screen counterparts.

Like with any sports movie, it is crucial the sport itself is done justice, and ‘Challengers’ does not disappoint, giving us arguably one of the most exhilarating tennis rallies to ever grace the screen, in fiction or reality. Ambitiously framed by cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the countless innovative depictions of tennis, particularly during the breath-taking finale, manages to keep up the movie’s energetic momentum from start to finish. The chaotic editing and structure is more than matched by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘ pulsating symph-heavy soundtrack, that calls back to their Academy Award winning score on David Fincher‘s The Social Network.

We may have been made to wait a few more months for it but Luca Guadagnino’s intoxicating romantic sports drama is a career best for all involved. I eagerly anticipate the Italian director’s next collaboration with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, the Daniel Craig led historical drama Queer, which is scheduled for a festival release later this year.

Challengers will be showing in UK and US cinemas Friday 26th April.

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