After unleashing passions by daring to attack the myth Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino is again on the front of the stage with Challengers, a turbulent story of love triangle in the tennis scene. A confusing feature film that proves, if necessary, the maestria of the Italian director. So put on your sneakers, raise your socks and grab your racket, that's a game ball review!
Witches, cannibals and tenniswomen
Tashi (Zendaya) is a brilliant tenniswoman, but a violent knee injury away from the courts. However, this is not enough to leave the mind of two young schoolmates, Art (Mike Faitt) and Patrick (Josh O). When they later participate in a tournament, their rivalries will take over and splash their game...
Suspiria the remake, the confusing Bones and All on which we will return and now Challengers, the filmography of Guadagnino is to say the least eclectic. But what unites this very heterogeneous cluster of feature films is their desire to deceive its spectator, to free itself of the kind expected, to constantly zigzag between the poncives to deliver its always personal version of the story. So that when Challengers is labeled in the category "Sport fuel", we know that we can expect anything but a common sports film...
Anarchic cinema
He who so much likes filming the upper bourgeoisie does not specifically allow a theoretical taste for the radical left to appear in his work... This makes it difficult to join Guadagnino a strong Bakounais fiber. No, but where his cinema is anarchist, it's in his will as a real dirty kid to explore – to disassemble? – surgically every possibility of cutting and mounting. Thus, as the Challengers, each scene of exchange (verbal, bullets, etc.) will be imposed a confusing formal detour. Fields-counterfields becoming a rotating camera rotating from one face to another, a recurring subjective view, the camera becoming the tennis ball itself or an inverted top-shot inventive, Guadagnino will boost to excess caffeine each sequence that would normally have been – in a more conventional film – a moment of tension redescent.
These same segments will – first well artificially, then little by little more naturally – be muscular with the amazing music composed by the great Trent Raznor and Atticus Ross (both members of the incredible band Nine Inch Nails, having already worked together often for the cinema): very heavy, inspired techno (in their own words) of the Berlin techno And "rave" music from the nineties. A surprising cocktail, tossed from the beginning of the film and first (you have to admit) rather repulsive. But past the first half-hour, the effect of this bourrin rhythm created by Raznor and Ross undoubtedly works and dope these scenes already over-energized by the radical staging described above.
This double process allows Guadagnino to perfectly shift the tempo of his film, which thus finds itself ass over top head: tension scenes (sexual, sports, conflict) become the quietest scenes of the feature film and thus benefit from an absolutely striking temporal distension effect. Caffeinated, Challengers enjoys this accelerator of rhythm doubly imposed (despite a montage still too epileptic to be perfectly pleasant) and it is clear that the two hours and a quarter of film run like lightning... But to tell what?
Coit interrupted
When Guadagnino proposed to the duo of Nine Inch Nails to participate in the O.B. of his new film, he summarized it in one sentence: « Is going to be super sexy ». And it must be noted that Challengers Suined a sexual tension that has enough to warm the tennis court even the most icy... Playing ultra-sexualized imagery surrounding this particular and very ritualized sport, Guadagnino will distill in his Challengers a complex love triangle, where each member seems to feel a reciprocal and equal attraction for the other two protagonists. And as soon as the story takes a break according to the detailed procedure above, a torrid tongue immediately takes its quarters in the plans of the feature film.
Yet, contrary to a Gaspar Noah which pushes all the pottery in its triangle in love with LoveOn the contrary, Guadagnino will constantly impose a last minute restraint. The sexual frustration of the characters mixes with this constant hot/cold blow on the spectator, to infuse with a minute-style atmosphere that stifles the feature film from end to end.
And finally, this cinema of repressed desire will end up constantly playing explicitly all its sex scenes, but on the tennis court. The feature film replaces them in favour of sporting scenes where all the sexual issues unfold in front of the camera with the same fervour, bathed in an aesthetic of obvious sweat and orgasmic sounds inherent in the sport in question. The idea may seem dubious on the paper, but it infuses Challengers a constant double reading as stimulating as amusing.
Cannibal couples
Challengers is especially good after Bones and All, Guadagnino's previous film: Zendaya Challengers becomes the opposite of the character of Maren incarnated by Taylor Russell in Bones and All. Antithetical women, but even purpose: the couple consumes from inside...
And cannibal, Challengers He's a little too. His constant overflow will force him to snack himself, until he becomes a redundant strand. His astray in scenes with more dubious staging – especially towards the end of the feature film, in front of an advertising sign – does not, however, amputate to Challengers its unique style and Guadagnino's maestria behind the camera. A brumble cinema, a cinema of effects and probably a cinema of clever little, but that will manage to keep from end to end its promises contrary to the recent Civil War Just as much about aesthetics and eye-catching, but much more like a sword blow in the water.
I just came to think about it but doesn't it have a little Match Point side with very young adults?
What is certain is that I look forward to discovering it on physical media! 🤩