the sexiest film of the year
In three parts, Murray Hines and friends unpack the latest work of passion by Luca Guadagnino - 'Challengers'.
Challengers is not the kind of film you watch alone at home – the proverbial heat may burn you up and kill you, leaving you dead in your single-room bachelor’s apartment, only to be discovered weeks later as a result of the smell emanating off your rotting body. And indeed it is bodies – their stench, their choreography, their heat, to which Luca Guadagnino turns his erotic gaze in his most recent tennis/sex/competition spectacle. It’s a film best enjoyed in the company of others, and one Sunday, I went with five of my closest friends to rewatch and sit, re-enraptured as Zendaya, Josh O’Connor
and Mike Faist blew up the screen. Reader, we swooned. Multiple times. As we left the theatre, we huddled together, invigorated by the magnitude of the tumultuous relationship at the film’s center, and in the car ride home, my friends Carl and Winford chatted excitedly about the characters by which they were most enamoured. Here, in no particular order (because obviously, Zendaya is best), is a tri-atribe of the triangle at the heart of what will certainly be the sexiest film of the year.
From Carl Belger: On Patrick Zweig, played by Josh O’Connor
Are you attracted to dirt, secondhand clothes from Makro and sweat? Well then Patrick is the guy for you. The fire in ‘fire and ice;’ Patrick represents passion, emotions, and impulsivity. In tennis, he represents raw talent. His unusual serve illustrates all of these qualities – it works for him, and it feels good, so why should he bother learning how to serve the traditional way? In fact, why should he bother learning anything about tennis at all? Tashi even points out that he is not a real tennis player because of this serve; to her, a real tennis player is a combination of Patrick and Art, talent and hard work.
Luca Guadagnino, the man that you are, you wouldn’t have a film without parallels. Patrick’s hot-headedness in sport is mirrored in his approach to his relationship with Tashi. Unlike Art, Patrick does not want to think hard when it comes to Tashi. He prefers to act instinctively, and he certainly won’t grovel for her. His instinctual nature is also why, unlike Art, Patrick can see through Tashi. At the beach in their teens, Patrick saw through her attendance to Stanford as a publicity stunt. In his car the night before the final, he knew she had come to him for sex (among other things). In the same scene he says exactly that to Tashi: “You like me for exactly one reason: I see you for who you are.”
This fatal flaw (and perhaps his dreamy thighs) is what attracted Tashi to him in the first place but also what tore them apart. His impulsivity was the cause of their fight before her injury. Feeling possessive and jealous of Tashi (and Art), and frustrated at Tashi’s critique of his tennis, he blows up and refuses to show up to her tennis match.
In the end, Patrick and Art are brought together despite being polar opposites. During the final moments of the film, as Tashi says can happen in tennis, they understand each other completely. They still love each other after all the years of betrayals because they both understand their love for the game. I think a TikTok commenter said it best: “Omg maybe the real tennis is the friends we made along the way.”
From Murray Hines: On Tashi Duncan, played by Zendaya
Halfway through the film, Tashi Duncan, now descended from the Mount Olympus of tennis upon which she has resided for most of her young life, sits opposite a wry Art Donaldson in a quiet Applebee’s. Her tennis career cut short by injury, by hubris, by men, she has slowly started to claw herself back from the shadow of who she once was. She looks at Art and forlornly whispers, “Unfortunately, my only skill in life is hitting a ball with a racquet.” She is wrong.
Tashi’s skill on the court is undeniable – the film sets her up as the centre of the triptych, both propelling her “two little white boys” towards each other and towards their destiny – and her tennis style is meant to combine the cold precision of Art’s game and the explosive passion of Patrick’s. There is nothing she cannot do with a racquet and a ball, and she looks sensational doing it. It cannot be understated how sensational Zendaya looks in this film – when she is on the court, when she is typing on her laptop, when she is spitting in Josh O’ Connor’s face and then licking it up (hubba hubba!) and (especially) when she is moisturising her legs. I have never seen anyone’s legs look so moisturised. I think my new sexuality is bisexual, but only for Zendaya.
But it is her skill at navigating human relationships that is her real talent – from the very first moment we meet Tashi, she sits, cross-legged and closed off from the other members in the audience of her husband’s game. Her presence reaches out to both him and her lover, Patrick on opposite ends of the court, and it is her gaze they seek throughout the game. When we flashback to her time as a younger woman, about to graduate high school and go to Stanford, she is the life of the party and understands how to wield this as a weapon. She meets Art and Patrick, understands who they are and how to play them, and yanks their strings to do her bidding. The driving force in her life may be tennis, but you cannot play alone, and Tashi knows exactly how to make your opponent do what you need. She reminds the young boys when she meets them that tennis is a relationship, the ball between two forces, the space between two people, the recoil, the extension and contraction. She walks into their lives and changes them forever, positioning herself as both the game and the prize, and then turning to wink at the camera and remind us she’s been the GameMaster the entire time.
From Winford Collings: On Art Donaldson, played by Mike Faist
Art: “I’m just asking that you love me no matter what.”
Tashi: “What am I? Jesus?”
Art: “Yeah.”
There exists a particular strain of debauched yearning recognisable only from Pisces to Pisces. It’s an affliction of the soul that Mike Faist perfected in his performance of Art Donaldson: licentious, manipulative, frenzied, delusional, patient, pathetic.
It's most visible in the way that Art makes Tashi his gravitational center - his body (and mind / soul / will) continually bending towards her. While the crowd's heads swivel between Tashi and her opponent, Art's eyes linger on her long after the ball has left her racket. Even in the throes of battle, on the court, after each point he turns to Tashi instinctively: “What did you think?”
It’s also visible in the way that he makes himself soft, puerile, in her presence. When he begs Tashi for reassurance, and she provides none, he lays himself in her lap, the rest of his body stretching and contorting into a pose reminiscent of a cherub in a Renaissance painting, back arched as he kisses her injured knee, silently pleading: “Stay. Be here.”
I imagine him alone, yelling, trembling, when Mitski sings: “so if you need to be mean / be mean to me / I can take it and put it inside of me / if your hands need to break / more than trinkets in your room / you can lean on my arm / as you break my heart / just don’t leave me alone / wondering where you are.”
He's a man possessed, not only by a Piscean malady but by the need for salvation, manna, to rain from the hands of a god named Tashi Duncan.
Carl Belger is a microbiologist who likes thick thighs. | Murray Hines is a writer-teacher-thinker-preacher with a passion for theatre, film and literature. | Winford Collings is a writer currently living in Cape Town.