'Challengers' review: As sexy as a tennis movie can be

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The sweat-drenched and emotionally bruising “Challengers” from director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) joins the likes of “King Richard,” “Wimbledon,” “Final Set” and “Battle of the Sexes” as one of the best tennis movies ever. And it’s the game-set-and-match winner as the sexiest tennis film to scorch the big screen, thanks in large part to the Ménage a Tennis trio of Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, with Zendaya handling a layered role with cool aplomb, while O’Connor and Faist exude old-fashioned movie star charisma. The sex scenes aren’t all that explicit, and on two occasions, intimate and heated encounters are actually interrupted — but that just adds to the tension.

It’s the focus on the desire to excel that makes “Challengers” so compelling. It’s as much about the desire to compete, to be on top, as it is about the thrill of victory. (To paraphrase one character: We’re talking about tennis, right? Even when we’re not.)

With a timeline that rocks back and forth with the head-swiveling velocity of a top-tier tennis match, “Challengers” is set against the backdrop of a 2019 ATP Challenger Tour event, i.e., a second-level tournament sponsored by a local tire company and offering relatively modest cash prizes.

At 33, the blond, endorsement-friendly and robotically excellent Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), who is a U.S. Open victory away from a career Grand Slam, has lost his swagger and is at a career crossroads. Art’s wife and coach, the passionate but also coldly calculating Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), enters Art in this minor event so he can regain his confidence, and it should be a cakewalk to the championship. But things get interesting, and oh so complicated, when it turns out Art’s estranged best friend (and Tashi’s onetime lover), one Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), has entered the tournament and is on a collision course to face Art in the finals.

There was a time when Patrick was considered Art’s equal or better in terms of raw talent, but he’s spent most of the last decade wallowing in a pool of partying and self-pitying, to the point where he’s sleeping in his car, and he uses hookup apps as a way of finding a place to stay for a night or two. Still, Patrick’s mere presence stirs up a complex cocktail of emotions for Art and Tashi — and let’s cue those flashback sequences to fill in the blanks.

It’s the summer of 2006. Art and Patrick are the U.S. Open junior doubles champions known by the cringey moniker of “Fire and Ice,” and from the moment they first see Tashi dominating on the court with awesome, animalistic ferocity, they’re obsessed with her . After a Gatsby-level party where the boys trip over themselves to gain Tashi’s affections, she stuns them by showing up at their hotel room later that night, coaxes them into a three-way make-out session — and then makes her exit, saying she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker.” This Tashi, she’s a clever and perceptive one. Manipulative as well.

Patrick and Tashi start seeing each other. Tashi puts her professional career on hold to take a scholarship and play for Stanford, where she sustains a horrific, career-ending injury. Art keeps hanging around, playing the long game, waiting for Patrick to blow up his relationship with Tashi, which he does, in spectacular fashion.

Cut to some 13 years later, and that Challengers match, and as was the case back in the day, it appears as if Tashi will side with whoever wins the match between Art and Patrick, even though she’s married to Art and has a daughter with him. It’s borderline ludicrous, like a tennis version of the love triangle in “Bull Durham,” but we come to see that for all of Tashi’s tennis acumen and sophistication, she has never truly gotten over her injury and hates the idea of settling into a comfortable life with a retired Art. She wants to ride with a competitor, with a WINNER.

As for the former Fire and Ice duo, what with all the voracious consumption of hot dogs and bananas and churros, not to mention a steam room confrontation between the two, even when they’re at each other’s throats, the homoerotic connection is always present and never subtle. There’s no doubt Art and Patrick have long been in love with Tashi, but they’ve loved each other on some level for an even longer amount of time. (The camera often lingers on the sinewy, graceful physiques of all three leads.)

With a biting and beautifully dense screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes, gorgeous cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and music by the iconic duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross capturing the electric heartbeat of the movie, “Challengers” fills every inch of its 131-minute running time with memorable sights and sounds. It’s outrageous and beautiful and brutal and exhilarating.