Challengers Review: A Messy Love Triangle

Image C/O Amazon MGM Studios

By Andrew Martinez Cabrera
Associate Editor

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If you’re unfortunate enough to be on X as much as I am, then you know that there’s a constant debate about the need for sex scenes in movies overall. To engage it in any matter is to engage in a Sisyphean struggle, but it’s important to detail here because of the nature of Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, “Challengers,” and its engagement with sex. 

An article in The Economist revealed that the top 250 movies since 2000 have had sexual content decrease by 40%. Look at social media in general and the sentiment around younger generations is vehemently anti-sex in media, almost Puritan-like, of course without religious sentiments influencing their feelings towards sexual content in their media. 

Yet “Challengers,” a film that details three tennis players at various points in their careers and their on-and-off, adulterous/polyamorous relationship, is a film whose primary audience seemingly is Gen Z. It’s a fair assumption to make when you cast Zendaya as your lead star. But while sex is a prevalent theme, and “Challengers” has a fair share of sex scenes, it’s relatively tame. Perhaps the semantic argument is that it’s less intensely erotically charged and more sensual. 
“Challengers” follows Tashi, a once-promising tennis player who suffered a life-altering injury during a match, who coaches her husband Art (Mike Faist) and enters him in a low-effort tennis match called a Challenger. What they don’t know is that their old friend and newfound enemy, Patrick (Josh O’Connor), is the competition. What was once supposed to be an easy (ego) victory turns into a personal fight as if it were bearing the same stakes as a Wimbledon match. 

“Challengers'' switches back and forth between various timelines, detailing Patrick and Art’s young dual-tennis career, Tashi and Art’s time at Stanford, and their modern-day relationship in 2019. Each temporal point details a pivotal step in the dissolution of friendships, the halting of their professional careers, and the moment of sensual release. However, these moments of release are communicated mostly through the act of tennis itself. 

“Tennis is an amazing sport to think about a love triangle because it’s so deeply charged erotically,” said screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. He adds “[It’s] steeped in repression, but also in wild abandon.” Guadagnino employs these sports moments cinematically while the sex scenes represent a form of repression. An especially comical scene between Zendaya and Josh O'Connor illustrates these relationships the best in that their sex (basically composed of half-naked bodies making out) is cut short because they’re too busy arguing about tennis. All the while, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ techno-club score pulsates as the camera whip pans between the two players.

In the absence of tennis being depicted in this aforementioned scene, sex becomes superimposed onto the sport itself. The sex scenes' cinematic language is relatively tame as opposed to the tennis moment’s unparalleled kinetic energy. It’s over-the-top, akin to an anime-style montage. Thematically too, Tashi bounces back and forth between both of its male protagonists, still participating in tennis even after she can’t athletically perform it anymore. 

Their bodies become moments of singled-out events during these tennis matches, sweating profusely into the camera lens, the slowed-motion movement of the racket swinging, then pummeled to the floor in a moment of anger – tension released dramatically. At the end of a match, two men hug so hard they fall to the ground. Sex bleeds into their sport. The only time the cinematic language transfers over is an overhead shot during the climatic final match scene. 

In its current cultural climate, “Challengers” becomes a pseudo-Hays Code film, harkening to Sirkian melodramas, where Hollywood imposed its own censorship rules, and filmmakers had to come up with creative ways to insinuate rather than depict. “Challengers” doesn’t have any restrictions to abide by, but somewhat reactionarily, emphasizes tennis over physical connection. It works with the characters because their fixed mindset is to be the greatest tennis player in the world. 

If that means sacrificing or minimizing human connections in favor of intense devotion to this sport, then it is a sacrifice they’re willing to make. While we may not understand the characters through romantic desires, which they often undermine, the audience comes to understand their vivacity, their drive, and their obsession with the vocation that deems them worthy challengers to be reckoned with.

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