Challengers (2024), directed by Luca Guadagnino

Tashi, Art and Patrick are champion junior tennis players with promising futures. The two boys have been inseparable since the age of 12 at tennis academy, Patrick’s talent always edging Art’s graft. Tashi lives and breathes tennis; it’s her obsession and she becomes theirs. When serious injury stops her brilliant career before it starts Tashi turns to coaching, but only one of Art or Patrick can benefit from her attentions. Ten years later Tashi and Art are married with a child and Art is attempting a comeback from injury to the top ten, while estranged Patrick is a struggling tennis journeyman on the fringe of the tour. Billed as a raunchy rom com, this film is not that. It is an examination of an equilateral love triangle, framed by the final of a Challenger tournament where the stakes could not be higher. The structure of the film is clever, with flashbacks from the crucial match filling in the interesting history of these three. But the overall treatment is shallow, 140 minutes apparently not long enough to develop any depth of character or motivation. This is not helped by whacky camera angles and a weird and over loud soundtrack, that often obscures the dialogue. The tennis looks good, but there is an awful lot of it. Josh O’Connor is the outstanding performer, managing to make more of Patrick than the inadequate writing should allow. Zendaya and Mike Faist are beautiful and athletic as the other two sides of the triangle. A long drawn out and entirely predictable climax culminates in a WTF ending, which exemplifies how this film misses the mark.