Challengers

Want to enjoy a solid movie with an engaging script, quality acting, and some really impressive camerawork? Go to Prime and find Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s subtly comic tale of tennis professionals engaged in a decades-long pas de trois. If you’re a tennis fan, you’ll be impressed with the details: challenger tournaments, grand slams, injuries - and some truly spectacular and exhilarating cinematography that might make you duck and gasp as you move out of the way of the flying balls. But tennis knowledge is not required. Guadagnino is using tennis as a backdrop to explore the complexities of human relationships - attraction, love, jealousy, power, control. And it doesn’t hurt that those emotional complications are being performed by Josh O’Connor (as the lucky loser, Patrick, always sweaty and unkempt and still trying to move up in the rankings), Mike Faist (as Art - blond and fit with Grand Slam titles and a secret desire to maybe just retire and be a dad), and Zendaya (as Tashi, gorgeous, tenacious, manipulative, and the object of everyone’s lust). Guadagnino’s gaze lingers on the sinewy, the gritty, and the grunty of the athlete with admiration and eroticism - no muscle goes unobserved and everyone has a chance to flex. And don’t overlook the recurring symbols of the film - vintage soda bottles, cigarettes, dueling churros, ripe bananas. You see? Is the movie Oscar-worthy? Maybe. The script is clever (if a bit convoluted as it drifts backward and forward in time), the direction is sleek and rapid with a camera that often ricochets like a well-hit tennis ball (as does the outstanding pulsating score by Trent Reznor), and the acting is first-rate, especially the glamorous Zendaya, the ultimate home-wrecker.