In April 2024, Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino (famously known for Call Me by Your Name), was released in theaters. The sport-centric love triangle romance, starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor, grossed $15 million in its first week across over 3,000 locations. The story follows three tennis players, Patrick, Art, and Tashi, whose stories intertwine and merge as they compete in various tournaments over the years, jumping back and forth between timelines. The piece has been controversial, with various reviews (over 583k reviews on Letterboxd and 73k posts on TikTok) taking over social media platforms and creating a whole new fanbase. We have a lot to say about Challengers. A lot. Our final opinion: it’s one of the most entertaining movies we’ve ever seen.
The movie was, in our opinion, an excellent portrayal of the real intensity of sportsmanship. The first thing that came to mind as we walked out of the cinema, shocked, was the overall excitement we had felt watching the last 30 minutes of this movie: extreme anticipation and a bit of confusion. It’s incredible how a single tennis match – which the entire movie essentially builds up to – could mean so much to the audience and make us feel so exhilarated, with climax-filled tennis scenes till the very end. The final match had us holding our breath at every bounce of the ball. It made us feel exactly how cinema should – like nothing else in our life matters at the moment. Our minds were at a complete pause with full focus on the shot. Action movies wish they were filled with this level of action.
It was not only the final match, every single time the movie showed a tennis court we were on the edge of our seats. It was an innovative, “messy,” portrayal of tennis, where the actors perfectly embodied the roles of professionals in the sport and, as tennis players here at Graded, we spent the entire weekend looking forward to Monday so that we could get on a court and play. We’re super excited to participate in our very own challengers in SAAC Curitiba 2024 and have recently noticed the uncanny similarities between Mr. V and Tashi.
The chronology of the movie was also captivating, making us question the storyline, with a cliffhanger ending and exciting plot holes throughout the story, that continuously twisted the audience’s mind. This diverse camera work makes the movie stand out with close-ups, and low shots, in which the audience gets to experience different perspectives of the sport by being in the crowd, the court, and even the ball. Whether you love playing tennis like us or not, this movie will certainly captivate you for its entire 2 hours and 11 minutes.
Not only were the scenes and overall cinematography picturesque, but the soundtrack was versatile and distinctive, which is what surprised us so much. Every song matched every scene, heightening the moments of tension between the characters, and enhancing the movie. The upbeat music that always played during matches kept us hanging on to every sound of a fore or backhand.
One of the key features that makes good cinema is the lasting effect it has on the audience, how much the directors and actors are able to have a continuous significance on anyone watching, even long after they have left the cinema. This movie does an amazing job at this. We have both been thinking about Tashi Duncan and Art Donaldson for the past few months nonstop, trying to impersonate them in our tennis, because the story goes deeper than just the actual plot. There is an underlying extended metaphor to the relationship of tennis and love, where one represents the other. One of our favorite moments, which reiterates the metaphorical relationship between the three character and their love tennis, is when Tashi (Zendaya) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) are talking about their relationship and she speaks solely in tennis terms to which Patrick questions “are we talking about tennis” and she responds, “what else would we be talking about,” making both the audience and the characters confused.
The ending was impactful. The movie, which ends in the middle of the match tiebreaker in the final of a tournament, leaves us with an open ending. We were continuously trying to make guesses of what was to come in the following shot and wondering where the movie would lead us and in the end, it was not even the slightest bit predictable. The symbiotic connection of the characters in the movie as they grow up together as well as their connection to tennis provides dynamics that are not “normalized” in society and it is eye-opening to watch their interactions. The relationship between the characters in this movie has been labeled by a lot as “weird,” which yes it is, but it is also what makes this movie so intriguing. Getting to experience such an unusual type of mysterious love story was what made the experience of watching it so thrilling, where everything is love, except love, which is tennis.
If you enjoyed the movie as much as we did, you should consider joining us at the Tennis Courts with Mr. V on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 16:40-18:10. Who knows, maybe you might even make it to the SAAC team and compete in Curitiba this year! Regardless, tune in to the livestream and support our Graded athletes!
With that, we end with one message: may thy racket chip and shatter
Sources
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16426418/\
