Challengers (2024) * * *

 

Directed by:  Luca Guadagnino

Starring:  Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O' Connor

Challengers is a time-bending sports drama about two male tennis players in love with the same woman, or each other, and for the most part it keeps us involved and it works.   The ending flies in the face of convention of your average sports movie which ends in "the big game" (maybe too much so), but overall Challengers provides us with some depth and unhappy characters trying to grasp on to elusive joy. 

The story is not told chronologically.  It jumps back and forth and fills in gaps which provide us with information we didn't know before.  It's an effective and strategic approach.  As Challengers opens, we meet Art (Faist), a multi-grand slam tennis champion on the downside of his career.  His wife, Tashi (Zendaya), wants him to regain his form by entering a warmup tournament weeks prior to the U.S. Open.  His finals opponent is Patrick (O'Connor), his former best friend and Tashi's former boyfriend.  We learn in the interim how these events unfolded.   

Tashi was a superstar on the rise when a college match injury forced her to quit playing.   She becomes Art's coach and soon his wife, but only after a stretch as Patrick's girlfriend.  Both Art and Patrick fall in love with Tashi at first sight while all are playing at a U.S. Open junior event.  However, there are vibes that Art and Patrick are already in love...with each other.  When Tashi accepts their invite to come to their room after midnight, they drink, they talk, and Tashi openly suggests that Art and Patrick are into each other.  When an attempted threesome begins, Tashi winds up sitting back and watching Art and Patrick make out.  The smile of satisfaction on her face tells the story.  She is happier to be right.

Nonetheless, the triangle goes on for over a decade with each person not realizing there are other fish in the sea.  Tashi, after her career-ending injury, winds up with Art and marries him, but neither are particularly happy.  Tashi treats her marriage as a business, while Art is a tougher read.  His friendship with Patrick became estranged over the years, until both face each other in the finals of the tournament with the past rearing its head in flashbacks.   Challengers isn't as much a movie about a romantic love triangle as it is about three wounded people looking for happiness, whether professionally or personally, and not quite succeeding at either.  

Zendaya, Faist, and O'Connor flesh out characters who aren't necessarily likable and don't attempt to be.  But we care about them nonetheless, because they have a desire to win that encompasses everything else, including their own contentment.  The final scenes are ones that don't fit at first, but they do inspire thought, and we may finally glimpse how each of these three people can find a way to succeed at being happy.