Why you absolutely have to see 'Challengers', the new film by Luca Guadagnino

During their studies, Patrick Zweig ( Josh O'Connor ) and Art Patrick ( Mike Faist ), fall in love with Tashi Duncan ( Zendaya ) — a young tennis prodigy whose destiny is turned upside down following an injury. Friends, lovers and rivals at the same time, all three see their paths cross again years later. Their past and present collide and previously unacknowledged tensions resurface.

If the eternal love triangle is a concept seen and revisited, Luca Guadagnino appropriates it here brilliantly. More than a story of teenage love affairs, this is a truly complex portrait of the three characters and their links, which the director explores through a narrative that is not linear. “The complexity of human relationships has always fascinated me,” explains Luca Guadagnino . “Human relationships are always accompanied by a form of ascendancy over others, but at the end of the day, they also require you to better dominate yourself. These were very strong elements in my eyes. I knew nothing about tennis, but when you are a director, you are supposed to explore areas that you know nothing about and study them. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to see that desire for others, relationships of domination and. self-control is found in the beauty and strength of tennis." The spectator is thus immersed in a series of back and forths between the past and the present, as if to better penetrate the minds of the protagonists, and detect the subtlety of the relationships of domination which play out on the ground and in their lives. 

The plot is well-crafted, but the performance of the actors brings success to this drama with a backdrop of romance. Zendaya, also a producer of the film, plays one of her first adult roles and reveals a fiercer – but still magnetic – side of her game. "It would have been easy to make Tashi an unambiguous character, in other words a woman determined,” adds the director. "But with Zendaya, it's quite the opposite: she imposes real authority and great strength, while showing a form of fragility that we find in Tashi. She built herself." In the role of Patrick, Josh O'Connor combines several registers here - from his tortured temperament to his sexy and self-confident air. “With Luca, very early on, we said to ourselves that Patrick had an animal side,” underlines the actor. "He is a carefree man. He comes from a privileged background and that gives him this ease in any situation. He is also very comfortable physically. […] And yet, Patrick knows that he doesn't get great results at tennis and he doesn't do it well. That's what allowed me to understand him better and find the part of vulnerability in a character that gives the appearance of being. very sure of himself." Finally, in the role of Art, Mike Faist infuses a toughness and determination into his character, then makes him a more introverted and pensive person when he questions his professional aspirations. “ What struck me most about Art Donaldson and the evolution of the character is that he is undoubtedly a man who is gradually moving away from his passion,” notes Faist. “In Challengers , we see young people who love their sport, then who get older and wonder what they will be able to do for the rest of their lives.”

In addition to actors at the top of their form and a flawless script, punctuated by tennis matches of striking realism, Challengers benefits from an original soundtrack with techno and electro accents by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross . “Instinctively, I wanted viewers to want to dance to the images. So, I suggested to Trent and Atticus that they compose music as if it were a rave party or house music. "The energy of the film had to come from the soundtrack. They ended up composing one of the most striking scores I've ever heard," confesses Guadagnino. “ Luca knows perfectly well what he wants while respecting our space of freedom. But from the start, he told us that Challengers was a very sexy film,” reveals Raznor. “He had worded it in an email and, in his message, there must have been six or seven 'x's' in the word sexy,” adds Ross. The bet is met: each sound amplifies an image, while the climax is reached during the final sequence - the tempo increasing as the final match takes place before our eyes, a true mirror of the excitement of the game as well as the emotions of the characters.

To dress the characters as he envisioned, and as the film's universe demanded, Guadagnino contacted designer Jonathan Anderson, artistic director of Loewe and creator of his own label JW Anderson. This gave the costumes the impression of bodies in movement, while tapping into the visceral desires and professional ambitions of the characters, but also highlighting the importance of brand culture. “Clothing is an extraordinary object and Luca knows how it offers an enlightening point of view on the wearer,” says Anderson. For the designer, these back and forths from one temporality to another constituted a real common thread for the creation of the costumes. "What we wanted in the part where the characters are still teenagers is for them to have a bit of a "have-you-seen-me" style: Oxford shirts and the kind of stereotypical outfits that men in this industry wore at the end of the 2000s and which gave them a preppy look [...] Then, as the plot progresses, we have a different point of view: Patrick is still extremely self-confident and arrogant, although he is losing momentum in the world of tennis, so that his clothes are a little less pretentious. On the other hand, Tashi realizes all her ambitions and her style is therefore to match. As for Art, his outfits are more banal. Jonathan Anderson reveals he took inspiration from John F. Kennedy Junior in the 80s and 90s for Patrick's ( Josh O'Connor ) outfits: "It looked like he could wear anything and still look attractive , in all circumstances" . For Art ( Mike Faist ), clothes are indicators of his success with branded pieces, but also of the influence of Tashi Duncan (his wife, played by Zendaya ), who satisfies a sort of tennis fantasy through her husband: “we have the feeling that Art is not totally free and that his clothes protect him from external events. […] He is extremely hygienic and his outfits echo this” . For Tashi, “I wanted her outfits to impose the idea that she is a victorious champion” he concludes.