Challengers released this past April and directed by the contemporary master auteur Luca Guadagnino (Bones and All and Call Me By Your Name) is a ménage à trois sports drama. It tracks the love story between three high-school friends, Patrick, Art, and Tashi, who meet at the US Open Junior Championships in their senior year. The film is scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, from the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. The pair has also scored big titles like The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and Bones and All (also for Guadagnino). The scoring is exceptional; the industrial rock music is especially fitting for the tennis match scenes, as the electronic elements coincide well with the action of the game to enhance its suspense as well as fit with the tempo of the set and the rhythm of each player’s movements. The partners incorporate experimental pieces into the score that, while a departure from the more mainstream industrial sound of the rest, are great accompaniments to the scenes. Such as a softer non-diegetic lullaby that sounds as if it is played on an electronic xylophone, or the inclusion of “Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: A New Year Carol” that plays in the background of a passionate encounter between two of the three lovers, Tashi and Patrick.
I noticed a lot of brand placements in this film: Uniqlo, Dunkin Donuts, Coca-Cola, JP Morgan, Gatorade, Panasonic, and others, which made me think about films, such as ones that deal in professional sports, that lend themselves well to these kinds of brand partnerships.
As far as characterization goes, while I do feel like each of the characters were given a definite outline, it seemed to me that Patrick’s character was far more well-defined than both Art and Tashi’s, and I think that this was to the detriment of the narrative effect. Patrick is clearly the rougher one of the three; unlike Tashi and Art who attend Stanford, Patrick opts out of university to go straight into the professional tennis-playing arena. When the audience meets him at the beginning of the Challenger match, he is a down on his luck professional, who has not nearly had as much success as Art has over the span of the thirteen years or so since the two played together in high school and first met Tashi at the US Open Juniors. While Patrick is ranked 201 in the world (according to Kuritzkes’ screenplay), Art is widely regarded as a star of his generation in men’s tennis. The film makes it explicit that Patrick is far from as decorated as Art, but we don’t get a clear picture of who Art is as a person, apart from his being a highly successful player who has only recently suffered a few setbacks. We get heavy doses of Patrick’s sense of humor and childlike charm though (a charm that is somehow still mostly appealing, although he is far too old for his antics) in scenes that demonstrate his character flaws, like one in which he shows up at a motel, and having very little money on his card, tries to barter with the hotel attendant: if he can sleep in one of the beds before his match tomorrow, he can pay with the money he will receive for participating in the tournament the following day. Art is decidedly more reserved than Patrick, and this itself is surely a character trait, but there are ways in which a director can draw out subtleties of character from even the most reserved. Perhaps this observation is a reflection of the acting itself and not the writer’s intent and maybe then too an example of why I would advocate that production teams need the writer(s) on set to offer counsel. The same goes for the depiction of Tashi. Her identity as an African-American woman is played up at several points: after she wins the US Open Juniors when the three of them are still in high school, one of the boys remarks that he “hopes her opponent is okay” to which she responds “she’s a sore loser and a racist bitch.” She also says the night she sees Patrick before the match, “I’m taking such good care of my little white boys.” Despite this character detail, we don’t see many sides of Tashi other than the Tashi who is coaching Art or angry at Patrick. I think that filling out Tashi and Art’s characters would make a film like this more compelling, though I understand there are time constraints.
The handling of narrative time is unconventional. The action of the film orbits the central Phil’s Tire Town Challenger match – the match that opens the film and that brings together the group of friends on which the story is based. As the film progresses, a series of flashbacks are introduced; the window of time between the flashback and the present moment of the Challenger match gradually decreases over the course of the film until the end where the flashback that we see is the night before the match. This editing builds the story’s momentum, and the climax of the film comes at the end and at the match’s close. The juxtaposition of the intense passion of Art, Patrick, and Tashi with the low level of the tournament is a clever and amusing dramatic contrast that is slowly explained with the progression of these flashbacks: thirteen years earlier…ten years earlier…eight years earlier…earlier that week…the night before. Tashi sits in the bleachers during the match overseeing it with an intensity as if it were a Wimbledon final. We come to understand as viewers the intricacies of the interwoven relationships between the three that have developed to lead them to where they stand with one another at the Challenger match, and the passion with which they each project onto the match makes sense against the backdrop of the flashbacks.
The love triangle naturally is the most gripping part of the film and is the film’s focal point. At the outset of the film, it appears as if the boys, Art and Patrick, are merely competing over their infatuation with Tashi. But we soon come to find out that they are not only jealous of the other’s attention from Tashi, but jealous of one another. The homoerotic attraction between Art and Patrick is not clearly expressed by means of a scene of intimacy between the two sans Tashi per say, however it is faintly gestured to many times in the film.
During the US Open Juniors when the trio is in their teenage years, Art and Patrick see Tashi play tennis for the first time. They practically drool over her while she plays, but for a moment their gaping is interrupted by a pause in the set when Tashi scores, and Patrick jolts up and grabs Art’s thigh. This reaction is unusual and betrays some degree of possessiveness that Patrick has for Art; it is as if he wants to keep his voyeurism of Tashi to himself, not only because he doesn’t want Art to somehow attract Tashi over him, but also perhaps because he doesn’t want Art to like someone more than he likes him. We also hear a graphic story that the boys tell to Tashi the first night they are hanging out together about how Patrick taught Art to masturbate and a moment of homoerotic charge when the two are in a sauna together prior to the Challenger match. The New York Times produced a good video explainer in their “Anatomy of a Scene” series on a scene that gracefully depicts Patrick’s jealousy of Art’s desire for his girlfriend.[1] The explanation is executed by the director, Luca.
The threesome is not far from ruthless when it comes to the way they compete for one another’s affections and repeatedly deceive the person who is left out. It is an interesting directorial choice that Tashi seems entirely oblivious to the desire between Patrick and Art. I wonder if I would have chosen to tip Tashi off to it somehow. Either way, the love triangle is unique in that it involves such a close attachment to the world of professional sports, which looms in the triangle like a mysterious fourth-party: Tashi says to Patrick at the beginning of the film, “But you don’t know what tennis is: it’s a relationship.” It is also distinctive in how Guadagnino captures with nuance the friendship that underlies and holds together the trio in the face of the turbulence and unpredictability of romantic love. I won’t reveal how, but the film closes with an embrace.
Star Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Links to Explore:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/movies/100000009409492/civil-war-scene.html?playlistId=video/anatomy-of-a-scene
[1] New York Times. "Challengers Scene." Last modified [10/08/2024]. https://www.nytimes.com/video/movies/100000009434686/challengers-scene.html.