Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024)

[thirtyframesasecond]

Watched this today as it's on Amazon Prime and I really liked it. It's a real three-hander and all roles are well written and performed. The score is terrific - who'd have thought The Downward Spiral-era Trent Reznor would be doing this thirty years later? The camerawork on the tennis shots is ahem, ace, really putting you into the match but also the conflicted emotions of the characters. Weirdly, or not, I think this is the first Zendaya film for sure that I've seen, and I only knew O'Connor from ITV's The Durrells.

[Maladroit Aggregator]

"I'm just stoppin' by, man - this is where you live."

Disliked Guadag-ding-doodle's previous flicks, so was predisposed to dislike this one, especially given the subject matter and setting. Surprise - I loved it! Thank you Amazon Prime.

Never felt his stylistic choices worked on his other movies, but here his photography, editing and music make a perfect Lubitsch-ian soufflé that - like that master's work - is much heavier than it seems on the frothy surface. This is a deeply observed character study that touches on ambition, failure, status, etc. and allows the players to be simultaneously vulnerable individuals and classic archetypes (well, except maybe the ambiguously gendered umpire in the final game - straight out of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode - who simultaneously cracked me up but also took me out of the film.) Not sure what all the idiotic Letterboxd reviews are on about when they say this is a very 80s film in a very 80s style - I presume none of those people were alive in the 80s, nor have they seen many 80s films (especially sports films) so that's easy to dismiss, while saying again how thrilling and genuinely seductive the style here is. As soon as it was over, I wanted to watch it again, because it was so invitingly lovely on the surface, but inexplicit enough in its drama as to oblige more thought.

The dialogue lacks the verbal dazzle of a Lubitsch or Wilder or Sturges or Hawks, but the not quite terse exchanges are both believable as conversation and just suggestive enough to work as authorial thematic hints. I wasn't keen at first on the non-linear edited form of the film, but it may have been best for "reveals" like the understanding, stated late in the movie, that Patrick - scruffy, sleeping in cars, credit card declined - is actually slumming it and doesn't need to win like the two others (though it's questionable how bad off they were, considering they attended Stanford.) That "need" is different and malleable for each character, they all seem to be playing for different reasons. It's not a matter of who is manipulating who, where loyalty lies, or even prize winnings, but three different approaches to life intersecting and altering another. And it was Patrick who was the most compelling character for me, I don't know if it was the writing or O'Connor's tremendously appealing performance, but his openness and overtures straddled the fine line between ingratiating charisma and scheming maneuvering, without ever settling on one or the other. I thought that Tashi's motives - as much as they are revealed, any way - were perhaps a bit too bald and selfish, and wondered if that wasn't a bit of residual misogyny from the writer or director.

As a cis-male who is exactly 1% homosexual, I do always find it amusing (and perhaps instructive) how gay directors cast the men in their films. Pasolini - whose films I adore - so often utilizes leering, toothless, freckle-faced, semi-literate goofballs, and Guadagnino does a bit of the same here, the two boys giving Dumbo the elephant a run for his money and appearing more comical to me than attractive. But it doesn't detract from the film, and since I find Zendaya kind of fish-faced as well, it all works.

Also, incredible final scene and especially final shot, so laugh out loud delightful and touching. In the wrong hands it would have been cringeworthy, but was a beautiful thing.

[pianocrash]

Caught this again recently, and was reminded of the garishness of it all front & center. While I admire Guadagnino's penchant for understanding the doings of the upper class & being able to portray them as almost-humans, I was still taken aback by the grotesqueries of the tennis action (a stand-in for all the ruff stuff that audiences seemed to have a chip with not being present, New York's alright if you like saxophones, etc.), which grated terribly. And while the film was entirely too yaoi in structure for my tastes (including more than two fistfuls of visual callbacks, enough for several movies), I gotta hand it to O'Connor for playing an absolute nobody of a scumbag that will do anything to survive, the gun on the wall, etc. Despite all of that? It's still the best film about tennis, even though it probably could've been about jai alai and worked equally as fine. I don't really understand the classic Hollywood writers comparisons, unless classic is a term for soapy double entendre & near-humorless angsty love triangles? That's pretty 80's inna can if you ask me, Lord Howard Deutch!

As a cis-male who is exactly 1% homosexual, I do always find it amusing (and perhaps instructive) how gay directors cast the men in their films. Pasolini - whose films I adore - so often utilizes leering, toothless, freckle-faced, semi-literate goofballs, and Guadagnino does a bit of the same here, the two boys giving Dumbo the elephant a run for his money and appearing more comical to me than attractive.

Pasolini was looking for truth & humanity, and, like any good craftsperson, was attempting to convey that feeling with his casting, i.e. Bresson, or others who utilize non-actors in their films (biased? Sure! Horny? Absolutely!). I suppose Guadagnino was casting these two for their role in the triangle, and were they harder-edged and less goofy, the less believable they'd conceivably fit into that perception of "hey...what if? Unless...!"

Also, I find it a bit hilarious how many people talking about this film have to admit their disposed sexuality, so I suppose that's a step in the right direction? That's kind of the point of the movie, right? I love saxophones!

[The Curious Sofa]

As a cis-male who is exactly 1% homosexual, I do always find it amusing (and perhaps instructive) how gay directors cast the men in their films. Pasolini - whose films I adore - so often utilizes leering, toothless, freckle-faced, semi-literate goofballs, and Guadagnino does a bit of the same here, the two boys giving Dumbo the elephant a run for his money and appearing more comical to me than attractive. But it doesn't detract from the film, and since I find Zendaya kind of fish-faced as well, it all works.

Also, incredible final scene and especially final shot, so laugh out loud delightful and touching. In the wrong hands it would have been cringeworthy, but was a beautiful thing.

That's a strange generalization about how gay directors cast male actors. All three of the leads in Challengers are good-looking without perfectly conforming to current ideals of beauty. Could it be that they were cast for their talent and the chemistry they have, as much as for their looks? Zendaya is beautiful, but with her lanky frame and unconventional features, she's no Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie (who, from reading drooling posts by straight men online, seem to conform to current ideals of female beauty). All three leads are attractive while still looking like regular people because that fits the movie.

I see no tendency in Guadagnino's filmography to cast particular male types. In Call Me by Your Name, Guadagnino cast Armie Hammer as the object of Chalamet's (now a major heartthrob himself) first crush. He is conventionally handsome, a character we see through the eyes of someone who idealizes him, and he has no quirks like stick-out ears (there is that cannibalism issue, but nobody's perfect).

[Maladroit Aggregator]

Your insightful responses have indeed given me pause, thank you. Upon reflection, I will now admit I am actually 2% homosexual. AND PROUD OF IT.

[The Curious Sofa]

Time to have a little parade around your living room or maybe celebrate by watching the Netflix series Senna