tennis is a conversation (subtext: tennis is FUCKING): a thread for luca guadagnino’s CHALLENGERS

an exercise in extended sexual tension and sweating and never saying what you mean except when it’s a heavily-encoded tennis serve. great performances by hot people. perfect score (loud goth fetish club music or silence). second luca movie i've really enjoyed in a row now

I'd like to fuck her on the tennis court, if you get my meaning.

― Bianca Jagger (jaymc), Friday, May 8, 2009 2:25 PM (fourteen years ago)

Just saw this this afternoon — hot! More than just hot, but it's certainly that. Really enjoyed it all the way through, all three leads are great (Zendaya with the confidence as a performer to sit back and let the boys tussle center stage).

It's funny, we watched A Bigger Splash last night because I hadn't seen it and there are a whole lot of parallels between the two even though the settings and specifics of the triangle are different (and A Bigger Splash was a triangle-plus, obviously). But Guadagnino sure does like his tangled webs of desire. I appreciate how much lightness he brings to the material, people in his movies can do objectively terrible things to/with each other but he keeps it mostly humane, he has empathy for his characters. And he's horny for them too.

My wife and I are tennis fans, we're wondering how this film would play to people who don't follow it at all. I imagine it would still flow just fine, since the game lends itself to such obvious metaphors. But I'm guessing Guadagnino is a fan, I don't think you could shoot it like that if you weren't.

And yeah the Reznor score is great and well deployed.

lol @ quoting me quoting Kicking and Screaming.

Also saw this today and enjoyed it!

Wow, the screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, is Celine Song's husband.

https://www.advocate.com/media-library/mike-faist-as-art-zendaya-as-tashi-and-josh-o-connor-as-patrick-in-challengers.jpg?id=52117063&width=980
https://img.rasset.ie/001eb6ba-800.jpg

written by this guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_FQU4KzN7A

I liked this interview with Kuritzkes, talking about how he got obsessed with tennis.

https://www.vulture.com/article/challengers-justin-kuritzkes-interview.html

i was listening to the soundtrack yesterday and this thing (hate calling a thing a thing but it is not really a review nor is it an essay) exploded out of me https://boxd.it/6kxfBv

I'm pretty shocked this was #1 this weekend and is set to become Guadagnino's best-performing film.

I'm watching it this afternoon. In the meantime, check out this conversation with Vulture's Angelica Jade Bastién and Matt Zoller Seitz:

Who has power, who is getting those producing credits. She made Challengers happen. She and her co-producers, Amy Pascal and Rachel O’Connor, are the ones who took on Justin Kuritzkes’s script and hired Luca Guadagnino. It was implied in her Vogue profile that it was Zendaya’s choice to cast Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.

A.J.B.: To riff on a line from the movie: Zendaya does love her little white boys. She has said that she knows she’s the industry’s “acceptable version of a Black girl,” and I think that’s something we have to keep in mind when watching her. This is not on her, but Hollywood’s return to whiteness is actually astounding. They said, “DEI, get out of here. Negroes, who?” I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about how that’s reflected onscreen. It’s interesting to see how Zendaya navigates that. Besides John David Washington in Malcolm & Marie, has she really had Black romantic partners or even interacted intimately with Black people onscreen? There’s her mom and sister in Euphoria, but beyond that, she tends to exist in a very white milieu. She’s not only the acceptable version of a Black girl in Hollywood because she’s thin and light-skinned and biracial. I think it’s because … now this is going to sound mean: I think she gives them the veneer of Black women’s anger but not the full experience of it.

MLC: What does that mean to you?

A.J.B.: It’s kind of weird for Challengers to have that white-boy line because it’s a movie that doesn’t actually give a shit about race. Do you think white people are comfortable with Black women’s actual, fully embodied anger? Of course not. It would turn to them. It is hard for me to look at her as an exalted actress who deserves all of this power because there are so many talented young Black actors who get one good role before their careers flatline. Look at the men in Moonlight, Trevante Rhodes and Ashton Sanders. Look at Anna Diop from Nikyatu Jusu’s film Nanny — that woman is amazing. I’m happy there’s a powerful Black actress, but the fact that Zendaya is pretty much the only younger one who has this kind of power is not a compliment to her but a diss toward Hollywood. If she was so instrumental in the casting of Challengers, it behooves us to ask, “Why are you surrounded by white people if you have the power not to be?

I know Dune and other things set up Zendaya as a player, but I'm not used to seeing bisexual romances in American multiplexes.

Those are reasonable questions about the movie and Zendaya in general — I joked to my wife that she should start a band called Zendaya and Her Fuckboys, but it's true that all the fuckboys are white. But fwiw in that Kuritzkes interview I posted above, he talks a fair amount about race and tennis, it's not that he didn't think about it. The female lead was written as a Black woman before Zendaya even saw the script.

I'm pretty shocked this was #1 this weekend and is set to become Guadagnino's best-performing film.

It's his first to get a wide release, no? Not that that's any guarantee that audiences will come out, of course; I'm glad they did.

Me, I was stoked ever since I saw the trailer a few months ago and knew I wanted to see it as soon as I could. I even managed to persuade my wife, who usually sees only a couple of movies in theaters each year, to join me. The premise was an easy sell.

My 19-yr-old Euphoria-watching son wants to see it, it's the only movie so far this year he's expressed an interest in. Zendaya's pull is real.

yeah afaict she’s the reason my early access screening was packed

So....Bowie's "Time Will Crawl" at a party? After "Hot in Herre"?!

So you're saying that it's set at an ILX FAP circa 2003.

I'm pretty shocked this was #1 this weekend

I mean, take a look at what landed #2

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl832733953/?ref_=bo_we_table_2

I smell crossover franchise.

So you're saying that it's set at an ILX FAP circa 2003.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, April 29, 2024 2:08 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Or my house today.

Where the party never ends.

From a USA Today story:

While Zendaya shot the sequence, David Bowie's thumping 1987 anthem "Time Will Crawl" was actually the song playing on the set.

"It's hilarious," Zendaya says, not knowing the song would be changed in post-production. "It would’ve been a different style of dance, let’s just say that.”

Guadagnino says he worked extensively with the movie's editor, Marco Costa, "on finding the right piece of music. It took us a while and we tried many things," including "Time Will Crawl," which now plays later in the sequence. "Eventually, it must’ve been my partner – who’s a bit younger than me – who said to use ‘Hot in Herre,’ because that’s what that generation clicked with.”

Thr way thr previous generation clocked with "Time Will Crawl"

"Time Will Crawl" was our "Hot in Herre"

lol Guadagnino must be a fan? My first thought was Reznor because of his Bowie ties, but it doesn't say anything about that.

Shout-out to whoever picked Lily Allen's "Smile" to be playing in the Stanford cafeteria in 2007

They really were the blueprint. She’s Tashi but for artists in 1933! pic.twitter.com/TIiyTA4GOn

— 𝕯𝖎𝖑𝖉𝖔 𝕭𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖘 🎾💦 (@EmmaTolkin) April 30, 2024

heh -- after Bull Durham I thought of Easy Living.

i just know everybody would’ve been freaking out about jeanne dielman if it sounded like this pic.twitter.com/h0b7FDUdEc

— Jared Gilman (@realJaredGilman) May 1, 2024

I've already sent that to two different people. Love it--I'm freaking out.

I had a feeling that score would inspire memes

It's a great score. (Giving it a listen now, first time away from seeing the film, which I did very much like.)

Very nice

Walking right into the trap of thinking this film might have aspired to more than just being not terrible... Except for the last 10 minutes, it's not terrible.

I loved Zendaya dancing to Nelly. And I liked the shot of her in the stands staring straight ahead as everyone else turned their heads from one side to the other--a director who knows some film history (with the intriguing suggestion that Tashi might be a psycho of sorts).

But Jesus, that ending. I especially hated it because to point out how preposterous it is is to immediately invite the response "But it's supposed to be--that's the joke of it." It made me think of the stodgy old Color of Money, which ends with a dynamic that's very comparable. The way Scorsese resolved it--the revelation of what actually happened--is devastating. My sense here was that you had a clueless (about tennis) director who thought he'd just hedge all bets. The good news: I was able to complete two crossword puzzles and read a short novel during those last three points.

Thought the score, which was fine as music, was employed laughably at times--the way it would suddenly come in for five or six seconds and then get cut off just as suddenly.

lol I loved the last 10 minutes! But yeah, if that doesn't work for you then the movie as a whole isn't going to. fwiw I think it gets tennis very well, but the story he's telling at the end isn't about tennis.

The tennis before the last 10 minutes was credible--although to my eye (and my eyesight's not all sharp), balls that were in were getting called out and vice-versa/.

Oh yeah, it wasn't technically perfect, but they put some real effort into it, hired Brad Gilbert as a consultant. It did feel immersed in that world to me, and I've seen tennis players saying the same.

Fun interview with Gilbert here, for those into the tennis side of it: https://www.gq.com/story/brad-gilbert-challengers-interview

Pretty interesting. I suddenly want to see if I can find a cheap copy or stream of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players_(1979_film)

Oops:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players_(1979_film)

That should go right to the film but doesn't...so we'll try this:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079723/

Always a good place to start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEbG5T-4fs

Wesley Morris and Alissa Wilkinson chew on the ending:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/movies/challengers-ending-zendaya.html

Not surprisingly, I thought the ending was the best mainstream movie ending I’ve seen in many cycles (last line of BARBIE probably pretty close)

(Oh I guess THE FABELMANS’ ending was also great)

Have you seen the emotional home run scene from The Natural?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQvUjK27ybk

👍🏻

To be honest, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what these characters want (maybe because I went back and saw it again!). Art wants Tashi, and he wants to rest. Patrick also wants Tashi, and he wants Art, too, but he also wants to crush them both a little, so that he feels like he’s reintegrated into their relationship. And Tashi just wants to win at tennis, because to her that is a relationship. That is love. She says as much the night they all first meet.

I think I fall on the side that Tashi won the match, because the scream of “Come on!” she lets out just before she smiles is precisely the same scream she lets out when she was winning the junior U.S. Open all those years earlier. But I think you’re also right, and that whatever happens right there at the end will result in expulsion, and probably it doesn’t matter. The whole point was for Art to get his groove back and Patrick to feel like he’s back in the game — that is, the three-way relationship — and they got that, too.

sounds right

I love Ron Shelton's good movies, and obv he would've been a less formally sassy director for this material -- but then his movies are cheerfully heterosexual. Morris misses that point, I think.

this looks like an insurance advert https://t.co/sRsok9Oz3b

— joolsd (@joolsd) May 19, 2024

He makes very pretty advertisements too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pObRIP1H4us

I'll buy it

god i loved this ridiculous movie

https://i.imgur.com/gf3udlL.gif

My wife went to see this and she thought it was so bad she walked out!

what insurance adverts involve a live tennis ball cam

My wife went to see this and she thought it was so bad she walked out!

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, May 20, 2024 1

how well do you know her

xp I don't think something seeming like a stylized commercial or music video is an indictment! A lot of directors and cinematographers started out doing that (or do so as a side gig) because you get to do a lot of interesting action camera work and the budget per minute is higher than a movie would be.

The reason entire movies tend to not be that punchy is it'd be tiring and expensive.

That tennis ball thing just seems pointless. Like, there's no possible way it can serve a narrative function that could not have been served in any other way. It's just the director (or, more precisely, the VFX department) jacking off.

Or having fun! (Not that jacking off and having fun are mutually exclusive.) I enjoyed it in the moment, it was in keeping with the dizziness of the whole thing.

(Not that jacking off and having fun are mutually exclusive.

on ILX I guess they are

every camera choice must serve a narrative function

but it's also one of the last shots of a tennis exchange, and the tension has been building over the whole movie to this point, so yeah i'd say it serves a narrative purpose, given that these two are only communicating their totally repressed love for each other through the medium of a tennis ball. why am i arguing with someone who hasn't seen the movie

the audience i saw this with were audibly enjoying themselves throughout the movie but they really lost it during that scene

every camera choice must serve a narrative function

YES. That function may be "disruption, because narrative coherence is a bourgeois construct," but every shot in a movie must carry meaning, whether textual or subtextual.

but it's also one of the last shots of a tennis exchange, and the tension has been building over the whole movie to this point, so yeah i'd say it serves a narrative purpose, given that these two are only communicating their totally repressed love for each other through the medium of a tennis ball.

So it's a cumshot? Why didn't you say so? That, I get.

Do they love each other? I'm not sure. They'd fuck each other blue, yeah. It's all in the game.

yeah i think i meant to type "repressed longing"

I know this is small fry, but, god, to watch a mainstream movie reeking of sex and whose camera kept leering at totally willing male actors was such a trip.

It is obvious subtext needed to be text, ergo, the final shot of the movie would have to involve one ramming a churro down the other's throat since they left that plot point hanging uh wait.

The churro scene is great because it's so on the nose, it's like a porn movie parody and it's hilarious.

down to the powdered sugar on the nose

Tennis movies are a conversation: another Zoomcast with my friend Steven on this and three other tennis movies, Borg vs. McEnroe, Battle of the Sexes, and--pretty much forgotten, with reason, but free on YouTube--1979's Players.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s-kSqUYjF0

I've become a very avid player the past three or four years--much prefer tennis to golf these days (and no interest in pickleball, even though I may be headed in that direction eventually because of standard hip/arthritis issues).

The thing that bothered me about Players (and it’s 30 years since I saw it and I may be wrong, and this is a daft detail to care about)… when Dean Martin Jr is playing Guillermo Vilas at the end the serving sequence is messed up. Like, given the scoreboard and what we saw earlier, GV should be serving now, not DPM. Kinda ruined it. :)

So there are at least three of us in the world who've seen it...As I say in the clip, generally speaking I didn't think the tennis was too bad in Players because of Dean Paul Martin's real-life experience. But I missed that.

Or maybe he's serving from the ad side instead of deuce? I dunno, these things stick in yr head and I could well be misremembering!
The sum total of what I recall:
Steve Guttenberg and placing bets on the clay court match and getting duffed up; McEnroe: "sure, what do you want it for?"; the love game vs Pancho; Nasty not losing, merely retiring hurt; John Lloyd getting further than he ever did IRL. But the rallies were generally nicely done, right? And yr actual Centre Court, no CGI.
I'll watch your zoomcast!

Weirdly enough, this turned up on my Widgets this morning--Dean Paul Martin had quite a life.

https://people.com/parents/all-about-dean-martin-8-kids/#:~:text=Dean's%20eight%20children%20came%20from,Jeanne%20Martin)%20the%20same%20year.

wish I'd been motivated to see this in the theater. that tennis ball scene would have been sick on a big screen and upped the tension in an obviously kinetic way. makes that last shot even more of a payoff

some excellent script choices. appreciated the entire bit where tashi's asked why she decided to play college tennis instead of directly going pro and once she's injured it's never returned to, she's all about tennis

the car advertisements and their presence despite the indication these two once-rising stars are on the way out, maybe an indicator of their transition to emeritus status and the tension about whether that's desired

I hated almost everything about this movie. I guess it reinforces the fact that most athletes are narcissistic shitheads so that’s good at least.

just watched - there were some great tennis shot pieces i wished they had used more (shadow scene early on, below ground views towards the end) instead of the cgi stuff. score killed. zweig's "I TOLD YA" shirt kept making me chuckle for no reason.

while watching the sauna scene and i couldn't help but think that if you have $72 in your bank account, getting your butt waxed shouldn't be a financial priority. but then again, i don't play professional tennis.

this is going on the queue