Challengers review: Zendaya dazzles in a sports drama that shapes up to be one of the year’s best films

Watching the characters in Challengers vie for victory is like watching Bernard Tomic play Nick Kyrgios in the final of Wimbledon — you don’t think anyone involved really deserves to win, but the stakes feel very high nonetheless. Italian director Luca Guadagnino specialises in films that feel risky and test the audience’s comfort level, from the underage gay romance Call Me By Your Name to the outrageous cannibalism of Bones and All. Compared to those two, Challengers is positively mainstream, and is certainly Guadagnino’s most accessible and purely pleasurable movie. But, if you go into this film expecting anything close to a traditional sports drama, you’ll come out wondering what the heck you’ve just spent two hours watching. The first indication this was not your average tennis movie came last year, when the trailer broke the internet by featuring the film’s marquee star, Zendaya, seemingly about to engage in a menage a trois with co-stars Mike Faist (West Side Story) and Josh O’Connor (Prince Charles in The Crown). The trio play teen tennis prodigies, who share a three-way kiss in a hotel room, which is just one of the many flashbacks Guadagnino deploys to help the audience forensically examine a decade-long love triangle. At the centre is Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, once considered the next big thing of the tennis world, only to have all that potential dashed by a career-ending injury. In the film’s present day, Tashi is living her tennis dream vicariously (with barely concealed resentment) as the coach of her husband, Art Donaldson (Faist), a champion who is stumbling to the end of a storied career. With a final US Open appearance on the horizon, Tashi decides to motivate her struggling hubby by entering him in a lowly challenger tournament, to beat up on nobodies. But one of the competitors in this tournament is far from a nobody — it is Art’s estranged former best friend, Patrick (O’Connor), who also happens to be Tashi’s former lover. Patrick had all the talent in the world, but no ambition, and sees beating Art as his path back to tennis relevance. The entire film is essentially the story of this one match, with moments on the court juxtaposed with years of past drama, betrayal and passion. Of the three leads, only Faist went into this project as an actual elite tennis player, but they combine to produce an elite soap opera that is as powerful and effective as a Rafael Nadal forehand. Guadagnino unashamedly leans into the melodrama, and the film is so much better for it, and the driving techno score from Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is immaculate. Absolutely one of the best films of the year. Just don’t expect a traditional grandstand finish. 4.5 Stars Starring: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, Faith Fay Rating: M In Cinemas: Now