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There are many words that describe watching Challengers: exciting, exhausting, romantic, euphoric, among many. They are all correct descriptors in some form. But how exactly has Luca Guadagnino accomplished a movie of this variety? One can only say that it starts with how there’s not a single moment in Challengers where you’re at least feeling as if you’re part of the action. And it’s also where the most intimate moments of the movie are made to feel like you’re always sensing something going on behind the scenes of a tough match. And I think it is maybe as good a film as Luca Guadagnino has ever made too, because I can’t say I’ve ever felt a movie made me feel like I was sweating endlessly from an exhaustive tennis match.

From the start of Challengers, we’re seeing a couple, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) as they’re in a rut – Art Donaldson is a star tennis player who has found himself within a rut due to an injury and his age, and has contemplated retiring. But as a boost for his morale, Tashi sets him up to be a wild card in a Challenger event, by setting up against a low-ranking player. The player he’s facing happens to be none other than Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), a longtime friend with whom he had distanced himself from. Through the match, we’re also seeing how such a friendship has indeed affected how the both of them are playing in the present, with flashbacks that tie themselves to how they both met Tashi: even hinting back towards where their rivalry had begun.

It becomes evident through how Challengers is structured that you’re not seated for a conventional sports film. But that also happens to be one among many things that I find to be innately exciting about the film, because it’s also a film about how small moments and infractions of our own friendships in the past motivate the way we act in the present. Of course, with such a structure you can only sense that it becomes less about the game and more about the sportsmanship of it all, as it feels like we’re recollecting the memories of people we thought we knew well at one point, flashing back in our present – and even changing our perceptions on the spot too.

But I think that’s only one small factor in what makes Challengers so brilliant. At the center of the tennis match that we’re watching in the movie is a very peculiar sort of love triangle; one that spans many years but also clearly plays into how much energy Art and Patrick are putting into their game. If anything, the fact that Luca Guadagnino is always so eager to show how these moments build up to what we’re seeing on the offset is what keeps every moment so exciting. In his eyes, sex is a very natural instinct for the human mind, and it’s felt all throughout the movie to the point of feeling like a tennis match has the energy you’ll find in a sex scene.

Which even leads me into talking about something else I find rather astonishing about Challengers: despite the purely sexual (sometimes homoerotic) energy you’ll see in the film, there is no sex depicted in the film. The closest one will get is a scene where both its male leads share a deeply intimate moment together with Zendaya (in what may be her best performance to date), but because the way that every interaction matters in the grand scheme of things all amounts to wholly exciting filmmaking in turn. There’s no denying that at a certain point you’ll only find yourself sucked in; especially as you realize that these cuts through time only unveil a more complex game being run behind the scenes at that. At a certain point, you also find you can’t help but try to catch up.

All this only fits for a movie that’s about chasing things that are on the move. The filmmaking reflects such energy beautifully, but the way it all looks. In another collaboration between Luca Guadagnino and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Challengers maintains such an energy from start to finish. It’s not limited to moments that are on the tennis court (there’s a scene where we’re seeing the camera move as if it were from the point of view of a tennis ball that’s especially bedazzling), but even in smaller moments that explore the nature of the friendship between its three leads: so as to ensure we sense that these tidbits in a peculiar friendship dynamic all play their part in what’s going through the mind of a player on the court. Adding to this, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score feels like it’s amping you up whenever it blasts in.

Luca Guadagnino might very well have made his most exciting film to date in Challengers, for we’re seeing a movie all about how love knows no boundaries. It’s something that keeps us going in life, whether we’re on the move or not. But in fact, there’s no moment more tense than seeing it all happen in the middle of an incredibly intense tennis match, and everything is always on the move in some way or another. There’s an intimacy you’re feeling in Challengers that you don’t see in many movies being made now in the United States at that. Not only is Luca Guadagnino insisting that this is just necessary to the human condition, but it’s always been a core part of what makes the art we love so lively.

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Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Amazon MGM Studios.

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Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes
Produced by Amy Pascal, Luca Guadagnino, Zendaya, Rachel O’Connor
Starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist
Premiere Date: March 26, 2024
Running Time: 131 minutes