Challengers

I’m not really sure what I was expecting from Challengers. The trailer told one story, the film itself another. As luck would have it, I liked the film better than my expectations coming out of the trailer. The way it came across I thought I was in for a young-person threesome / love triangle sex comedy of some sort couched in the very obvious metaphor of a tennis match. I guess that’s ultimately somewhat true, but the film, unlike the trailer, is about more than this goofy tryst. It’s about what creates and drives passion. Where we place our priorities. And how we motivate ourselves and others we love. Okay, that sounds obnoxious, but the point is they could have just made a sex romp, but the film tried to go deeper. Which, despite its flaws, I can appreciate.

I don’t watch Euphoria. Because I’m an adult male human being who would feel weird watching adults cosplaying as teenagers taking drugs and having lots of sex. Which is what I’ve heard that show is all about. Shit, I’ve seen more episodes of K.C. Undercover than I have Euphoria. Which doesn’t sound great, considering that starred a teenaged Zendaya on the Disney Channel. To be fair, though, I was watching it with a young Hipster Jr. Jr. and an oddly curious Hipster Jr., who had moved on from his iCarly obsession. But even back then it was pretty obvious Zendaya was going to be a thing. The question here is if people would take this rising star as the film’s villain. The film’s heavy. The film’s fulcrum on which success and disaster balances. Once again, I’m giving too much weight to this relatively light film, but the point is that Zandaya, as Tashi Duncan, doesn’t play the world’s most sympathetic character. In fact, she’s kind of an asshole. The funny part is, if you dig in online, it’s not even close to unanimous that she’s the antagonist in this film. Which is surprising to me, but probably not to the filmmaker, who probably has a way more subtle and nuanced vision of his own characters.

Back to the love triangle. Best friends, Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist), are promising young tennis players who are seemingly well on their way to some sort of professional glory. Or whatever happens to teenagers who win the boys’ doubles title at the US Open. Both becomes obsessed with another young player, Tashi Duncan, as she plays her singles match at the same tournament. She’s passionate, but also cold and calculating on the court. The boys, by contrast seem to play with young-person joy and verve. In comparison, she seems like a true pro, dominating her opponents with focused cunning. Again, this is my interpretation from my middling tennis career at a couple tennis camps where you did actually have to challenge people during the day to move ranks before sneaking out at night to meet girls. I was not a serious player. The point is, she seems to be on a whole different level than the boys. This all leads to the scene from the trailer with teenaged versions of the three (in 2006) sitting on a bed in a hotel room about to have what seems like a steamy threesome. Not so much. But despite the snub by Tashi, the boys are about as close as two boys can be without being boyfriends. And this is where the beginning of the antagonism (at least in my opinion) starts. She promises that whomever wins the singles final the next day — Patrick and Art playing against each other — can basically get a date with her. She may see this at “motivating” each boy to try his hardest. But in essence, it’s the beginning of the fracture of what appears to be a really great friendship between the two. Does Tashi truly do this to motivate them? Or to break them apart? You decide!

From this bet, a relationship between Tashi and Patrick emerges. Art moves on to play at Stanford while Patrick tries his hand at the pro circuit. Tashi also enrolls at Stanford, coming on as the obvious crown jewel in the school’s tennis program. But before she can even get going, Tashi has a catastrophic knee injury. And, Jesus, I knew they had to show it. Why!? Totally unnecessary (and unrealistic) ACL tear during a match. Gross. Anyhow, in this day and age, this wouldn’t be a career-ending injury, but I suppose in 2007 it may have been? I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a yadda-yadda on that front. But we’ll accept it because this is a movie. Point is, Tashi’s career is over before it begins. As is her relationship with Patrick, who is seemingly not sufficiently serious about her situation. Though this breakup is in some ways exacerbated by a really obviously jealous Art. So is he the bad guy for accelerating the breaking up an already semi-doomed relationship? Maybe? We jump forward in time and Art is the start player, with Tashi the powerful woman behind the successful man. Patrick has receded from the scene and is basically a dude who sleeps in his car and drives from tournament to tournament making just enough prize money to subsist. Meanwhile Art’s passion for the game has wained in the face of mounting injuries and years of tennis, tennis, tennis. Tashi, who clearly controls his career, signs him up for a lame tourney in New Rochelle to get his confidence and passion back, assuming that it would be an easy win for him (considering he’s about to play for tennis’ Grand Slam). But, of course, Patrick shows up at the same tournament. It’s on!

This is all to lead up to the rekindling of the old love triangle. The question of what sparks passion in love. In profession. In relationships. For Art we see that he is motivated by his daughter. It’s subtle, but he hasn’t lost his passion, it’s just shifted focus. For Tashi she remains focused on the game. Living vicariously through Art, knowing that she could have been the best. Probably a painful thing to understand, but not exactly the warm and fuzzy reason for relationships. And Patrick… it’s a little unclear. Again, there’s a moment where we’re led to believe Patrick may be bi-sexual (or perhaps just opportunistic), which made me wonder if perhaps his original relationship with Art may have been more than just a friendship in his mind. His actions later are honestly pretty confounding. Is he trying to hurt Art? Or expose the fact Tashi would stop at nothing to keep his career going (and in doing so keep her in the game), despite his loss of passion for the sport? It’s all very messy. But Patrick could also be posed as the bad guy here. Though his motivations are also entangled with his love for both Art and Tashi.

The acting is great across the board. At first I found Faist’s delivery a little odd, but it ended up fitting the character. The thing that was most shocking was seeing an interview with Josh O’Conner after seeing the film. He’s a kind of shy, soft-spoken British dude. Which just doesn’t at all track with the cocky, self-assured American character he plays in the film. Which makes his portrayal all that much more impressive. And Zendaya, despite playing a semi-unlikable character, is hard to look away from on screen. The three of them are pretty much the only people in the entire movie. The only other folks with speaking parts are mostly background players like the tennis chair judge and a couple people who sign them in at the tournament. Otherwise, this could have been a three-person stage play. The fourth character, if we were to say there was one, is the Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross soundtrack. It wends its way around the scenes, giving some gravitas to a story that — if it was made in the 90s, back when we made these types of relationship films — would have had some light, flowery tossed-off nonsense. Ultimately, I was surprisingly entertained by this film. It has one of those ambiguous endings, but it certain left you with something that your typical romantic dramedy rarely does.