Ball Boys

Hot and bothered tennis savants make for ferocious paramours in Challengers, an engorged sports film where mind fucks rival actual fucks in a tryst-tangled triad. There’s the “fire and ice” duo of quick-tempered Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and cool cucumber Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), tight buds since puberty. And then there’s Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), the poker-faced object of their desire and the bro-wrecker wedge who unintentionally drives them apart. Do personal appetites threaten their careers? Will they manage to survive each other? It all depends on your definition of winning.

CHALLENGERS ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Written by: Justin Kuritzkes
Starring: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist
Running time: 131 mins

Justin Kuritzkes’ sharp, spiky script and Luca Guadagnino’s patented sensualism are a deliciously entertaining blend which makes for a smoldering love triangle that leans into all the grunts and groans on court and off. The kind of high-performance athleticism on display in Challengers requires these racquet-crushing lotharios to funnel their undulating passions into laser-focus control. It’s the perfect pressure-cooker distillation for explosive melodrama, the kind that manifests as both brimming rage and unbridled lust. Even the arguments are hot: after one steamy conflagration with Patrick in a nondescript back-alley, Tashi storms away—nipples hard as diamonds.

Plus, all that homoerotic tension between frenemies Patrick and Art keeps bubbling up, no matter how much they resist. Tashi senses it instantly, when they meet as teenagers—maybe it’s because both of them keep mouthing the tips of the glass soda bottles they keep cradling in their hands—so she tricks them into late-night French kissing while she watches. And wait until you see these two men lock eyes and bite churros! Such simmering resentment, such lusty relish. No surprise, coming from Guadagnino, the mischievous romantic who redefined eating peaches in the gay modern classic Call Me By Your Name.

Tennis requires high-strung instruments for complete domination, and it’s thrilling to watch Guadagnino make a film with such tightly wound characters volleying dialogue at each other with devastating impact. You think Tashi is the master of the backhand stroke? Wait until she gets a taste of Patrick’s ball smashes!

Challengers toggles back and forth chronologically—maybe too much, time-jump fatigue starts to settle in after an hour or so—tracing the relationships among these three from a hyper-tense 2019 regional tournament all the way back to happy-go-lucky 2006 and the milestones in between. There’s the fraught relationship between Patrick and Tashi at Stamford, a crippling injury that aborts Tashi’s red-rocket trajectory as the pre-pro “Duncanator,” and Art’s marriage to Tashi followed by her spectacularly successful guidance as his coach and manager. That’s a lot of baggage to unpack over those thirteen years, and Gudagnino keeps the ball mostly in play without the story feeling too convoluted.

Helping boost energy levels is a hard-pumping neo-’80s synth score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, giving that kind of dreamy-trance dance music unexpectedly aggressive teeth. Guadagnino uses the grinding grooves to modulate amped-up emotions, even dropping cues at unexpected moments to emphasize the story’s off-kilter vibes. His music choice are exhilarating until the very end, when he milks an extended climatic showdown with one too many needle drops fueling one slo-mo shot after another that bring gameplay to a standstill. Don’t worry: the Italian stylist recovers and delivers a final moment that’s hilariously apt—as overheated as it is sincere.

The film’s central trio is naggingly restless: Art is desperate for Tashi’s affection, Tashi stubbornly refuses to admit that she can love anyone, and Patrick is constantly frustrated that his own cocksure swagger keeps sabotaging his genuine ability to succeed—not only in professional tennis, but with Tashi’s love and Patrick’s friendship. Art and Tashi make millions on the pro circuit, sponsoring Wilson, UNIQLO, and even Aston Martin, while Patrick flails with a two-digit bank balance and crippling credit card debt in the hand-to-mouth life of a top-300 ranked player with no right to be so blindly cocksure.

O’Connor gives Patrick the brooding bad-boy charisma that gives Challengers its juice: he loosens up Art’s uptight aspirations and diverts Tashi from her myopic obsession with the game. “Are we talking about tennis?” he asks her during a make-out session barbed with slights. “We’re always talking about tennis,” she replies. 

Tashi delivers the film’s central insight soon after meeting the men she eventually calls her two little white boys. “You don’t know what tennis is,” she sneers. “Tennis is a relationship.” The game is the only way she really knows how to engage with the world, for better and for worse, because she recognizes the intense intimacy that happens when two equally talented people face off and really push each other to the limit. At a certain point, it’s not a rivalry anymore. It’s just pure love.