Challengers may be the first tennis movie that really takes us onto the court. When racket connects with ball it’s as if an exocet missile has been fired. Every contact between ball and court is explosive, as director, Luca Gaudagnino pumps up the volume and pushes us back into our seats. Sweat doesn’t drip from the players – it cascades. Previous tennis films, such as 2021’s King Richard, seem limp in comparison.
The action is almost as ferocious off-court, in a love triangle among three ambitious tennis stars that flips back 13 years, then edges forward like the points in a closely contested match in which the lead keeps changing hands.
In fact, the entire film is structured around a single tennis match, as two former friends compete in the final of an unheralded ATP Challenger tournament in New Rochelle, watched by the woman each of them loves. If it sounds like a melodrama, Gaudagnino and writer, Justin Kuritzkes, are aware of the overheated nature of this material and allow for a good deal of humour, to the point where it’s impossible to say where drama ends, and comedy begins.
At one end of the court stands Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), an admired star of the game, currently going through a slump in form and confidence. His opponent is Paul Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who arrived at the tournament without enough money for a hotel room or a meal. These two players stand at the opposite poles of the men’s game, Art as a celebrated champion, Paul as a deadbeat who has thrown away a promising career. But the two men have a history.
Zoom back thirteen years, and they are best buddies, winning doubles matches together and competing in a friendly fashion. Art is the ‘good guy’ – solid, reliable and thoroughly decent. Paul is a rogue, who keeps trying to drag his stitched-up companion into trouble. Complementary personalities, the two are inseparable until they lay eyes on teenage tennis star, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). They think she’s pure class, and out of their league. Tashi, however, thinks differently and pays them a memorable visit in their shared, garbage-strewn hotel room. As three bodies squirm on the bed, Tashi withdraws, leaving the boys locked in each other’s arms, exposing the homoerotic undertones of their friendship. She’ll give her phone number to whichever one wins the match they are playing tomorrow.
That happens to be Paul – who always wins. Art responds stoically, but keeps his eye on Tashi, waiting for his reckless friend to make a mistake. That happens when Tashi suffers an injury on court, and Art is there to sit beside her bed. It’s the beginnng of the story that will see Art and Tashi, 13 years later, established as the power couple of world tennis, he as a champion, she as wife and manager. They have a daughter named Lilly, and see their faces splashed across advertisements as large as buildings. As the couple began their ascent, Paul, the outcast of the trio, spiralled into tennis oblivion.
While the match progesses, Paul taking the first set, Art the second, so too do the flashbacks, revealing how Paul keeps returning as an object of Tashi’s hatred and lust. It’s not just the old story about girls being attracted to all the ‘wrong’ guys, it’s a reflection on Art’s growing disenchantment with the game. His whole life and his marriage have been one long, intense conversation about tennis. He’s rich, he’s tired, he’s lacking in motivation and wants out. But Tashi, who sees tennis as her biggest “relationship”, isn’t ready to give the game away, and neither is Paul, who may have wasted his talent but has dreams of a late resurgence.
The match in New Rochelle becomes an echo of the one thirteen years earlier, when it was only Tashi’s phone number at stake. Now it’s a fight to the finish, with Tashi as the prize. The final set is a staggering spectacle, with the ball zipping back and forth across the net with impossible speed and the sound of firecrackers. The game ends with the longest, most surreal match point ever captured on film. It’s a virtuoso performance from Thai cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom.
There’s hardly room for a supporting cast in this menage-à-trois, conducted on and off the court. Faist and O’Connor inhabit their roles in the most persuasive manner, Art bottling up his feelings, Paul grinning and joking his way through a problem. Zendaya has no difficulty playing the boys’ mutual love objet. She is as sexy and sultry as any screen heroine you’ll seen this year, although so thin it’s hard to imagine her taking a set off Serena Williams.
The contest is conducted on the court and in the minds of the three players, with Tashi being by far the most psychologically complex. What does she want? An impossible blend of calculation and instinct, she probably couldn’t say.
To make matters even more frenetic, Gaudagnino has conjured up the ghost of Giorgio Moroder (84 yesterday and still recording!), with a throbbing, electronic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from the band, Nine Inch Nails, that ambushes the characters in scene after scene. I kept expecting Donna Summer to appear at any moment.
As an Italian director working in Hollywood, Guadagnino seems immune to the American vice of making every movie a commentary on the nation’s political madness. There are no underying morals or messages in Challengers: it’s three sets and a tiebreak of pure entertainment. An incredibly innovative movie in terms of both camerawork and sound, with a script that never loses its way, it’s a rare work of art that feels just like sport.
I’m not sure I’d recommend a double header, following the breathless action of Challengers with the slow, silent build-up of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist. It’d be even weirder than pairing Barbie and Oppenheimer. Ever since the success of Drive My Car (2021), the Japanese director has been a favourite on the film festival circuit. Among other silverware, this new film has taken out the Grand Jury Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Best Film at the London Fim Festival, and no fewer than five awards in Venice, including the Grand Jury Prize.
It’s odd that in an era of diminishing attention spans, a Japanese director who regularly tests the patience of his audience, is one of the cinema’s rising stars. Yet for everyone who loves Hamaguchi’s movies, there are plenty who find them too slow and introverted.
Evil Does Not Exist will continue to divide audiences. The film began as a kind of tone poem, in collaboration with composer, Eiko Ishibashi, who has supplied the layered, atmospheric score. Hamaguchi has matched the music with shots of sunlight filtered through tree branches. It takes a long time to emerge from this meditation as we watch Takumi (Hiroshi Omika), wandering around the forest in his mountain village. He chops wood, collects water from a stream in plastic containers, and goes to pick up his 8-year-old daughter, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), from school. Takumi is a widower, and a ‘jack of all trades’, with an intimate knowledge of the forest.
Halfway through the story, Takumi and his fellow villagers attend a meeting with two company agents from Tokyo, who have come to answer questions about a new “glamping” enterprise they hope to establish. Those operatives, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani), are completely unprepared for the issues the vllagers raise. It seems the camp’s septic tank will pollute the local water sources; there are not enough staff allocated to look after the site; there’s a danger from fires; the camp is in the midst of a deer trail… The two agents are overwhelmed and come across as professionally insincere.
At this point we understand why we spent so long watching Takumi collecting water from the stream. In the context of this story the stream is important, as the proposed camp threatens to upset the fragile balance between nature and human occupation. For the most part the meeting is conducted in a polite manner, but it generates a real dramatic tension. We can feel the wheels of corporate profit-seeking poised to crush the environment Takumi and others call home.
Anybody who has ever fought against some proposed development that will trash the neighbourhood while enriching a small cartel of greedy businessmen, will recognise this scenario. It’s a universal problem, as relevant to the Sydney suburbs as it is to the mountains of Japan.
Next, we are in a room in Tokyo with Takahashi and Mayazumi, as they listen to a depressing assessment from their boss that the villagers need to be appeased, while sticking to the original plan. After all, what’s the problem with a little pollution?
On the way back to the village, Takahashi fantasises about changing his life and moving to the country. He is disturbed by the role he is being forced to play, which goes against his instincts. This may seem a surprising turnaround, but it’s the kind of surprise one often encounters in Hamaguchi’s films. The two agents spend the afternoon with Takumi, but the visit takes an unexpected turn, leading to an ending that has generated endless discussion. I’m not about to elaborate on what takes place.
As the credits roll, I realised that this film, which begins in such a staid manner, will stay lodged in my mind for a very long time. The low key nature of the first scenes makes the later scenes even more disturbing. It’s like a screw that is slowly tightened while we feel nothing is happening. The title remains an enigma, but this is because there are too many possible explanations. Even if “evil” doesn’t exist, there’s a tremendous power in nature and in human destiny, that defies understanding.
Challengers
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Written by Justin Kuritzkes
Starring: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor
USA, M, 131 mins
Evil Does Not Exist
Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Written by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi & Eiko Ishibashi
Starring: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani, Hazuki Kikuchi, Hiroyuki Miura, Yoshinori Miyara, Taijiro Tamura, Yuto Torii
Japan, PG, 106 mins
Published in the Australian Financial Review, 27 April, 2024