I went to see Challengers this week, Luca Guadagnino’s new film, where his name is now on the poster above the title, and promoted as a sexy love triangle about tennis players, with a heavy and fantastic synth score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The score was fun to listen to, but sometimes it played too loudly over scenes, or made scenes seem way more dramatic than they actually seemed. I did enjoy listening to the score by itself, which felt to work more than when it seemed to be drowning out scenes.
The film starred the trio of Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist as Tashi, Patrick, and Art, as collegiate and professional tennis players, caught up in a love triangle that spans thirteen years from ages 18-31, with events told out of chronological order with lots of flashbacks, culminating in a challenger match between Patrick and Art at a critical crossroads in their careers and friendship, and Tashi as both Art’s wife and Patrick’s ex-girlfriend in the middle, manipulating their emotions and friendship for her own mind games and power plays.
I went into the film thinking it would have a threesome eroticism like Y Tu Mama Tambien or The Dreamers, in a foreign art house film kind of way, but while the film does have one effective seduction scene between the trio, in which Tashi toys with Patrick and Art as the object of their affection, it feels like it pulls its punches in any other sexually charged scene, like more teasing the audience or keeping it from going past its R rating.
I liked the creative POV shots during the tennis matches, like the POV of the players during the game, or even of the tennis ball during the match, but I felt like the characters all felt very shallow, and I couldn’t understand why tennis was important to them beyond it being their most talented skill in life. The film will touch on the men coming from wealthy backgrounds, while Tashi gains wealth from her skills, and it will briefly touch on racism in the privileged tennis world, but I couldn’t really understand the characters beyond them being competitive and manipulative with each other. I wanted more of a character drama, and I felt like the writing didn’t go much deeper than I wanted it to.
The actors were good, particularly with Josh O’Connor playing a scummy person with Patrick, who seemed to really relish to both cut down his best friend Art and his girlfriend Tashi, to be an asshole and bring out the anger in them, with his competitive spirit. Patrick is in a slump in his career, and getting by playing low-level matches and living paycheck to paycheck, and feeling lost in his career.
The film centers Zendaya as the femme fatale, but she didn’t seem convincing to me, as a seductress manipulating men beyond the teenage scenes. Partially is that she still looks younger than her nearly 28 years, which makes her look more girlish, and the trio, despite being in their late twenties and early thirties, came off more like high schoolers than adults, with a lot of their immature romantic drama. I am glad that Zendaya is playing more adult characters, to not be pigeonholed as teen characters at nearly 30, but I just didn’t find her believable to think she’d still screw with two men’s lives far into adulthood. But I could understand how she was doing anything she could to still be connected to tennis through the two loves of her life.
Mike Faist was good, and I was surprised to find out he’s American, as he has a very British look to him, and he was previously known for playing Riff in the remake of West Side Story. His character had more vulnerability to him, as someone who felt like a second choice to Tashi, and trying to get his game success back on track.
While I feel the movie was overhyped, it was still nice to see a mainstream artsy drama mixing sports and eroticism (which also could be said for the recent Kristen Stewart film Love Lies Bleeding), and it has a great synth score and was decent to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment