Always Talking About Tennis

I don’t pay much attention to sports. While I have in the past associated myself with certain teams (the Lions and the Patriots) it is more because family members liked the sports and/or the teams than any kind of feelings I have for them specifically. I can appreciate that most sports require a certain degree of athleticism, I can enjoy plays at a general level, but I don’t really care if one team wins over another. I’m not the one playing so I’m not invested in what’s going on. I care more about the game when I’m playing Tecmo Super Bowl than I ever do watching actual teams play football, as an example.

And the same extends to movies and shows about sports. By and large I struggle to invest in the sport being played in these forms of entertainment. I’m there for the characters, not the actual game, and I only really care if they win or lose when it matters to the characters. If the team is on a series I assume that’s important, but I don’t really care, deep down, or even most of the time understand what it means. Sports ball is great if you enjoy it and I, personally, do not. That’s just how it is.

Because of that I generally avoid most movies about sports. It’s a sport, and I don’t care. A sports movie has to get a lot of attention, and rave reviews, to even get on my radar. Most films and shows about sports I sit there going, “well, I’m sure that’s nice but I have other things to watch.” I know a lot of people were raving about Challengers when it came out, praising the performances, the characters, the direction, and I didn’t doubt that. But it’s a movie about tennis, and I just can’t care about tennis. I can’t. So I skipped it when it was in theaters, mentally putting a pin in it only if it was somehow really easy for me to watch it with minimal effort. And that was the case when it came up on Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. for me last week. The streamer made it really easy for me to watch, with minimal effort, and at that point I guessed I didn’t have much choice. We were in it. Time to watch Challengers.

The film is about tennis. In fact, as the characters emphasize to each other at various points during the film, even when they aren’t directly talking about tennis they’re talking about tennis. These players live and die tennis. It’s their whole lives. Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) is a professional player on a downswing. He’s old (for the sport) and doesn’t enjoy it as much as he used to. He’s struggling to win matches, or even find much desire to play, much to the consternation of his wife, Tashi (Zendaya). She used to be a player on the rise and absolutely could have dominated the sport, except a knee injury in college sidelined her and ended her career. Now she’s stuck managing Art, watching him throw his career away slowly, one match at a time. And then there’s Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor) who desperately wants to be pro, but he can’t seem to get his act together at all.

As it turns out, Art and Patrick used to be best friends having, at one time, been roommates all the way back in boarding school. They played doubles tennis together when they were young semi-pros, and they both admired Tashi, having the hots for her and hoping that one of them could hook up with her. It ended up being Patrick that dated her first, but their relationship got rocky when he wasn’t playing the game Tashi thought it should be played. They broke up, she got injured, and Art eventually slid in. Now Art and Patrick are at the same dirt tournament, a tennis challenger for some country club, and they end up playing against each other in the finals. It’s not just the game on the line for them at that point. It’s their past, their former friendship, their future, and everything they’ve said and left unsaid. Will one of them win or will tennis bring these former friends turned enemies back together?

There’s a richness to the storytelling in Challengers that goes beyond the basic “who will win the match” plotline at the center of it all. The story has a history for the characters dating back to before we even see them, and the film flits back and forth between the present of the tennis match and all the times between when they first meet Tashi and when the challenger match occurs. This fills us in on everything so we get to see the highs and the lows of this threesome of friends / lovers / enemies from all angles. All the enjoyable moments together, all the trashy things they do to each other. All of it, laid out for us to see.

What’s really interesting about it is that the film makes all the characters compelling, even when they’re being shitty to each other. We feel the warmth of their friendships and the spitefulness of their actions, but we understand them as people. They’re realistic, they’re raw, they’re fully realized. If there was anything off about the writing, it would feel contrived and fake, but the film manages to get us invested in these very human, very interesting characters in a way that helps this whole story transcend it just being about a tennis game. Yes, it’s about tennis, but tennis for them is about everything and we get invested in their everything.

Credit for this goes not only to the script, as written by Justin Kuritzkes, but also the performances by Faist, O’Conner, and Zendaya. These three are deeply into their characters, each of them finding different shades to play. Faist taps into the way Art is done, not just with his career but also the drama surrounding his wife. O’Conner makes Patrick a headstrong, foolhardy kind of character, cocksure and saucy, and that comes out not only off the court but also on. And Zendaya invests Tashi with a steely resolve, a force of nature when she plays that dominates all facets of her life. She’s a tennis player, top of her game, even when she can’t play.

Impressively the film tosses off the line, more than once, that when the characters are talking about something else, they’re “always talking about tennis.” It’s a joke at the start, but the longer the film goes on the more you realize it’s true. Not just because they live and breathe it but for these characters tennis is a metaphor for everything. It’s what imbues everything they say and do, and the actors make this believable. Another film would play it for laughs, make it a joke, be silly about the fact that these people are so deep into tennis it means everything to them. But not Challengers. This film makes it feel honest.

Of course, credit is also due to Luca Guadagnino who helms this film with aplomb. He gets great performances from all the cast, focusing on what the actors provide and honing it until it feels truly real. But his direction and camera work, as overseen by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, is active and alive. During the matches, we follow the balls, follow the players, follow the moves. It’s chaotic and flying, and the film shows the games from so many angles, rarely ever repeating so that each match feels like its own living thing. It’s impressive and engaging and feels like no other sports movie I’ve seen.

In short, this is the kind of sports film that’s worth taking a chance on. Yes, it’s about people and their relationships, the highs and lows of their lives, but it’s also about tennis. It’s all about tennis. This is a tennis movie and the film never lets you forget that. And yet, you don’t mind it. Even if you don’t like sports movies (as I don’t, generally) this film is about more than sports and exactly about sports and it works. This is a deeply interesting, deeply investing movie that’s absolutely worth watching. It’s a film about tennis, and it’s great.