The most Sisyphean thing about my life, on the other hand, is the awards season; this movie was originally slated to open the Venice Film Festival last fall, which probably means it would have been trapped in Oscar discourse pretty fast. Flung out into the spring movie calendar, the whole thing takes on a different tenor, I think.
MORRIS I’m with you. Here we have a movie based on an original script opening in April that isn’t out sniffing around for Oscars. It’s got a starry-ish cast and is a cultural and box office hit. The thing about stakes I should’ve mentioned earlier is that, going in, they were low for me. You like this movie much more than I do, Alissa, but I do like it. It’s got this fragrant semi- or even anti-seriousness, a substance many of the movies I love secrete. I’m grateful for “Challengers” that way. It’s the kind of movie a lot of us complain is missing from our current moviegoing diets — mid-tier, mid-budget, “middlebrow” — the kind of movie that makes, solidifies and tests stardom; the kind of movie that, were it a TV show, our colleague James Poniewozik might aptly identify as mid. Mid was what made American movies what they were. Now, one art form’s drought is another’s deluge.
If Zendaya’s screen-acting career lasts, this stretch, which includes that second “Dune” installment, will likely be decisive when we look back. We actually want to see her act — maybe even with Faist and O’Connor, whose smirky, ratty understanding of bad-boy swagger, insecurity and disrespect is exciting. His performance embodies something you identified earlier that I appreciate about “Challengers,” which is the repetitive, hothouse nature of all sports.
You and I are having this conversation in the middle of what for certain people is a spring bonanza — early-season baseball, midseason golf, clay-court tennis, hockey and basketball playoffs, assorted drafts, the culmination of the Champions League. If sports are vital to our cultural health, it could be because, as you surmise, they’re philosophy-proof. But also perhaps because they’re philosophy-ridden: a proving ground and microcosm of so much that defines us as a species — how do we collaborate, strategize, obey, perceive, communicate, conform, transcend, sacrifice, strive, pay attention (but not too much attention), fail, recover, lose again, compete; how do we believe in each other and in ourselves. And sometimes — usually, in a few sports — the avatars within that microcosm are gorgeous and weird.
Tennis fascinates because, like boxing and the martial arts, it’s always only ever the two of you out there, figuring yourselves out in front of an audience by testing each other. But it’s never enough, in sports, to be talented. You need some combination of these other traits. You need some hunger. Which, again, is a very Guadagnino mode of being.
If anything compelled me about that ending, it’s probably that. Tashi knows what it takes to win. Because she can no longer win for herself, she now relies on these avatars to sate her lust for competition. I’m just restating your observation, Alissa, but that last shot is these two guys proving to her that they want it. Whatever that “it” turns out to be. The proof, the hunger is what turns her on.
