Challengers: Tennis, Voyeurism and the Obsessed Artist

18/07/2024

Maia Wensley (she/her) analyses Luca Guadagnino’s latest release

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Image by IMDb

By Maia Wensley

A great film has the power to make absolutely anything seem like the most important thing in the world to the least invested viewer, wholly absorbing them into a dazzling universe previously ignored by or unknown to them. Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers (2024) unashamedly revels in the gossip, sex and drama that forms the underbelly of the sporting world, transforming tennis into something infinitely enthralling, magical and terrifying, even for those viewers (like myself) who pay little attention to sports.

To say that Challengers is just about tennis would be a gross oversimplification. For central characters Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor), tennis is the medium through which their various obsessions, flaws, fears and vulnerabilities find root. This is most abundantly clear in Tashi, whose injury early on in her career prevents her from ‘going pro’ and forces her into coaching instead. This, for me, is the crux of the film; it is Tashi’s obsession with tennis, her perfectionism, and her subtle yet stifling grief over not being able to do what she is best at anymore that drives the action. The sport, and her position in its sidelines, comes to represent her failure, a constant reminder of her inability to fill the role of tennis superstar which was collectively assumed to be her destiny.

We are invited to watch in horror and fascination as Tashi’s unspent dreams metamorphose into an obsession with winning matches vicariously through her husband, poisoning their marriage. Early on in the film, Tashi says that she sees tennis as being similar to a relationship. Ironically, her relationship with tennis is the only one that she ever wholly dedicates herself to, and everything else is ultimately eclipsed by it. In this way, Challengers is the latest entry in a line of films such as Black Swan (2010) and Whiplash (2014) which explore how the obsessive artist destroys themselves and those around them through their fixation on their craft.

If Tashi is the obsessive artist, then Patrick and Art are the obsessive lovers. When the boys watch her play tennis, their gaze never follows the ball, only her. Their eyes, and bodies, are constantly drawn to her to a magnetic, animalistic degree. There is one scene early on in the film that really highlights this for me. In it, Tashi sits on the beach in a glimmering blue dress with the moon behind her, her hair flowing in the wind. Entranced, Art comments on the way she screamed after she won a match, saying that he had “never heard anything like it before”. Her mermaid-like appearance, combined with Art’s allusion to her uniquely alluring cry, hints at her influence on the boys being adjacent to that of a siren, a mythical creature that lures people in with her voice to drown them. This parallel reflects the unrelenting, destructive attraction that Art and Patrick feel towards her, and the heightened, god-like pedestal they place her on.

Tashi plays into the boys’ obsession with her, utilising it to get what she wants on numerous occasions. She is acutely aware that they will do almost whatever she asks for, both on the court and outside of it. Moreover, she actively enjoys the passion and competition she stirs within them. As aforementioned, the idea of gazing is a significant motif in the film, and Tashi certainly engages in her fair share of it, voyeuristically revelling in the drama she creates. And yet, none of the three main characters are blameless, or even particularly likeable. Each one of them is selfish in their own way. For the most part, this works to the film’s advantage – we get to sit back with our popcorn and gleefully watch the absolute trainwreck of it all.

It would be remiss not to briefly mention that the film looks absolutely gorgeous. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom previously worked on Call Me By Your Name (2017) with Guadagnino, and Challengers is certainly a worthy visual successor. With its vibrant, lollipop colours and intimate, sweaty angles, it is an instant summer classic through sheer aesthetics alone.

It shines sonically as well. We are immediately thrown into a match in the first scene with no clue about the history between the two players on screen, but the fast-paced techno music of the original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross almost immediately establishes the air of drama and excruciatingly high-stakes. The Blood Orange song in THAT scene (you’ll have to watch it to find out!) is also a fantastic choice, and I have not been able to stop listening to it since watching.

We have come to expect great things from Guadagnino, so it comes as little surprise that Challengers is an absolute riot. I have tried to keep this article relatively spoiler-free because I urge everyone to watch the film for themselves. Like Art and Patrick, you won’t be able to look away.