really struggling to pinpoint what about this didn’t work for me as a whole, especially because there are many individual elements that did work (or that at least felt intentional/creative/risky in a thought provoking, engaging way).

I think my main issue with Challengers is that its emotional threads—its relationships, tension, sexiness, obsession—feel largely performed or asserted rather than authentically developed or crafted through the film’s performances or form.

it’s in the script’s approach to characterisation & exposition, particularly in the opening scenes. (do we really need three, separate, spelled-out moments to tell us Patrick is down on his luck & out of money in painfully pointed contrast to the Donaldsons’ wealth?) it’s in the recurring phallic visuals that wink at some sort of subtext like a joke. & it’s in any moments of supposed tension or suspense, where the overuse of slow-motion and the stop-and-start use of Reznor & Ross’ pounding score tell us to move to the edge of our seats rather than generating such an impulse in us unconsciously.

most of all, though, it happens in Challengers’ love triangle, which rests entirely on the assumption of Tashi’s desirability (a static assertion) & does little to depict any language of actual desire (a charged & flowing current between people) beyond a disembodied kind of college freshmen infatuation. sure, bodies intersect & entangle in Challengers, but it almost feels like a perfunctory fulfilment of genre & audience expectation.

(i could attribute some of this to the decision to shoot most of the romance/sex scenes with what feels like stagnant disinterest—mainly an unmoving medium or long shot & uninspired lighting. i tend to think that if you want to make a scene sexy, your film form should be a little sexy, too? but i also see the argument that in Challengers everything is intentionally uninteresting in comparison to the electricity of tennis—& it’s during the on-court scenes where the camera re its potential.)

but i think the main culprit here is that Zendaya just does not have chemistry with either of her co-stars. (Josh O’Connor & Mike Faist do have chemistry with each other & that’s the more interesting & thorny subtext of the film, but it gets largely left behind, particularly in the second half). throughout Challengers, characters are standing on opposite sides of a net (either literally or figuratively), & the area between them feels just like empty space when it should be a taut, negotiated, hyper-aware distance.

looking at the general (effusive & horny) consensus on this movie, I’m clearly in the minority here. I might feel entirely different on a rewatch. maybe I was tired! maybe I was feeling contrarian! maybe I’m unable to see past how much I really really dislike all of these characters! i’m open to the possibility that I’m actually just wrong about Challengers—I can spell out a counter argument to pretty much all of my above arguments.

there’s only one thing I’m 1000% sure of, so I’ll end with that: Mike Faist should be an Academy Award winner for his performance in Spielberg’s West Side Story. ok, that is all. bye.