CHALLENGERS: Love from the Tennis Movie Playbook – Jennifer Green comments

Challengers is a wild ride that pulls from the tennis movie playbook

The final climactic scenes of Luca Guadagnino’s new film Challengers track an epic court battle between two professional tennis players, Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor). The story follows them as childhood best friends coming up in the world of pro tennis whose relationship is complicated by their love for the same woman, frustrated tennis star Tashi (Zendaya). Their own obvious mutual attraction adds another level of homoerotic friction. You’d expect nothing less from the director of Call Me by My Name.

In the final sequence, the three-way pent-up tension explodes on the tennis court. Representing a potential resolution to on- and off-court rivalries, Guadagnino infuses the battle with layers of emotional turmoil that are paralleled visually in the match. He covers the two men in sweat while cool Zendaya observes from the sidelines, though her uncertainty rises with each smack of the ball. All of this is set to a pulsating techno beat, composed by Atticus Ross and Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor, reminiscent of 90s-era German thriller Run Lola Run.

Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom films the final scenes as if the camera were inside the balls ricocheting over the net, attached to players sprinting back and forth across the baseline, and hovering far above as well as seemingly underneath the court floor. All of these angles and perspectives build up to a fantastical final moment where one man leaps into the air and… well, I won’t spoil it if you haven’t yet watched, but suffice it to say that the audience in the theater where I saw the movie literally screamed at the film’s close and left the dark room laughing and buzzing.

When was the last time you saw a tennis movie inspire that kind of response? The answer is never.

But that doesn’t mean Challengers is entirely new as far as tennis movies go. In fact, the film pulls quite a few ideas from the existing tennis movie playbook, including a classic scene from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.

As anyone who plays tennis will tell you, every match holds drama, suspense, a little comedy and a lot of passion. That’s why tennis works so well as a visual metaphor in films of any genre.

Love-Love

In Challengers, as in other tennis movies, the sport embodies the film’s themes, for example competition, winning and losing, love and obsession. Zendaya’s Tashi talks about tennis as a relationship between players – “like being in love.” But the story here is the romantic triangle, not the game itself. The same can be said of 2004 romantic comedy Wimbledon. Though this film weaves in commentary about championship players, their handlers and the fanfare of pro tennis, the focus is on the romance. Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) is an aging player who’s fallen steeply in the rankings as he nears retirement, until he meets rising star Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst). They begin a relationship which rekindles his competitive fire but risks throwing her off her game. Likewise in Challengers, the highs and lows of the players’ careers are an inextricable part of their romantic entanglement.

Fire & Ice

Historic rivalries make great fodder for tennis movies. Art and Patrick have nothing on Björn Borg and John McEnroe or Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. Tashi calls her two suitors “fire and ice,” a Borg-McEnroe reference and the name of a 2011 TV movie about the pair. The 2017 Swedish film Borg vs. McEnroe (starring Sverrir Gudnason and Shia LaBeouf) turns on the competitors’ infamous 1980 Wimbledon final. Also from 2017, Battle of the Sexes reenacts the macho ‘70s-era challenge by Riggs (Steve Carell) of leading female player King (Emma Stone), who was also struggling at the time with her sexuality. Challengers follows both films’ lead in using on- and off-court flashbacks to build suspense for a final showdown. All three movies also delve into the psychological toll pro-level tennis can have on top-tier players and those closest to them. Art takes winning much more seriously than Patrick, and he pointedly tells his rival (in love and tennis) that what’s important is “winning the points that matter.”

Serena’s Legacy

I will never understand why the first fiction film about superstar Serena Williams was more focused on her father than her, but Will Smith won an Oscar in 2022 for King Richard. In fact, the tale looks at how the whole Williams family prioritized Serena and sister Venus’s chances at professional careers over all else in their lives. It also touches on issues of classism and racism in tennis. Richard hustles to secure opportunities for his daughters not naturally open to them at the time as Black girls from a low-income background. In Challengers, the wealthy Patrick and Art first meet as roommates at a private tennis academy/boarding school, an option Tashi says her family couldn’t afford. That Tashi’s character is Black represents a nod to the Williams sisters and the young players who followed in their footsteps.

Under Pressure

Woody Allen famously wooed Annie Hall on the court, and he returned to the game in 2005’s Match Point, using tennis as a backdrop for a murder mystery. The film opens on a ball sailing over the net. Foreshadowing later events in the film, a voiceover reflects on the chance involved when the ball hits the top of the net and tips to one side or the other. According to this film, pro tennis, like murder, requires coolness under pressure and a certain amount of luck. Challengers and Match Point both take a nod from a classic scene in Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train, where a character stares out ominously from the stands of a tennis match, the only motionless head in a crowd otherwise avidly tracking the back-and-forth play. Zendaya isn’t there to commit a murder, but you wouldn’t know it from the masterful tension of the final scenes in Guadagnino’s film.