“Reigning Top of 2024!”
Talking tennis, Tashi Duncan, and 'Challengers' with Mall Goth’s Rose Dommu.
There are sports movies and then there is Challengers, two hours of tennis and rivalries and wild desire. As teenage tennis prodigies, Tashi (Zendaya1), Patrick (Josh O’Connor), and Art (Mike Faist) explore each other’s bodies. As adults, they tread upon one another’s nerves. Things careen out of control at a shabby New Rochelle tennis tournament where the gentlemen compete on the court and Tashi choreographs their emotions from the sidelines. It’s my favorite movie since Passages, another movie about being hot and ignoring consequences. Luca Guadagningo — you’ve done it again!
Why should your husband keep you for your boyfriend? Does Challengers fortify Zendaya’s status as a movie star? Men should be pushing their beds together before they lay their heads to rest!
2, writer of the newsletter and I met in a Google Doc to discuss everything Challengers-related.Hunter: At a certain point I just looked down at the notebook I take notes in during screenings and wrote, in all caps, “THIGH.” What was your immediate, visceral reaction to Challengers, Rose?
Rose: That I needed 17 minutes alone in a room with Mike Faist. I also wanted to snort something and dance to the score, and buy those Chanel espadrilles Zendaya was wearing.
Hunter: There are so many industry-specific things happening in Challengers that really thrill me. Shall we start there? After about a decade of no real leading men under 35, our cup runneth over: Mike Faist and Josh O’Conner are great in this, but we could’ve slotted in Harris Dickinson, Lucas Hedges, Austin Butler, and, and, and… Zendaya’s career reached its crescent at such an unusual time. Between lockdown and Euphoria, she was the biggest movie star who’d yet to actually lead a big studio movie. Now she’s out of Sam Levinson’s clutches, and Challengers has her working with a director with such a specific, sexy-frenetic style. Challengers is fun, Challengers is a kind of erotic-thriller-sports movie-love story. It’s the kind of made-for-adults mid-budget movie that everyone complains isn’t getting made anymore.
Rose: Bring back the romantic thriller! I watched Cruel Intentions and Indecent Proposal3 in the same 24 hours last week and experienced a real yearning for that kind of film, one we don’t see much outside of streaming these days, and the ones that are on streaming usually suck. Challengers has it all: a hot young cast, sharp writing, a director who has reached a point in his career where he seems to really be playing in his films. And then of course a score you can fuck to, or at least work out to. I was so excited by this movie. It felt like a reaction to and rejection of the Gen Z purity culture that exists online right now, and it was so unambiguous. I left the theatre feeling like I understood every decision each character made, because they were so well written and well acted and well directed, and that was refreshing! It was brutal and honest but still so damn fun.
Hunter: I scrolled past a clip from a junket interview where Zendaya was asked about “getting to play the villain” and I … just rolled my eyes. This a movie for grown people, and it doesn’t lend itself to such tidy reads. I don’t think of Tashi as a “villain,” just as I didn’t feel that she wasn’t central enough to the story, or that she’s in the background of these men’s love story. Tashi’s arc feels like one of real loss: there’s nothing more important to her than tennis, which is taken from her. How can she recapture some of that adrenaline, some of that magic? Art has never wanted it, and tennis seems like Patrick’s means to an end. The boys assigned her as the object of their desire, that’s not something she played with but didn’t choose. What did you think of Tashi?
Rose: Reigning top of 2024! From the moment she enters the film, it molds itself around her. Tashi is the person with the most power in Challengers, and when the way she’d traditionally accessed that power—tennis—is taken away from her, she finds a way to get it back. I think ultimately the person Tashi is playing against isn’t Art or Patrick, it’s herself. I agree that calling her the villain is far too simplistic. She’s only the villain if you think this story is Art and Patrick’s story, and it isn’t. When you said these roles could have been played by any of the hot Hollywood twinks (I’m paraphrasing), that is a sort of meta-commentary that works itself into the movie. These boys are archetypes, ciphers. They’re interchangeable. They’re the racket and the ball. Tashi is the player.
Hunter: Absolutely that. She feels essential to this story in the way neither of the boys aren’t. And, in a way, maybe they are responding to the way they will never be as important to her as she is to them. But going after the same girl is another facet of their competition with each other, their desire for one another. I think about that quote from Call Me By Your Name, where Elio talks about Oliver: “It would finally dawn on us both that he was more me than I had ever been myself, because when he became me and I became him in bed so many years ago, he was and would forever remain, long after every forked road in life had done its work, my brother, my friend, my father, my son, my husband, my lover, myself.” Like, that’s the boys pushing their beds together and in the sauna and in the big Challengers match. Even Art’s shoulders-back rejection of Patrick’s fast-and-loose gameplay binds them together.
I want to stay with Zendaya for a moment. I thought she was great in this, and then I wondered if she was the weakest actor of the three, but now I’ve returned to thinking she’s great. Do I buy that she’s a mother? Not necessarily. But she’s giving a more controlled performance than I think a lot of people are appreciating. She tempers her charisma up and down. These two boys just want to kiss, and she wants to compete. The critique that she’s beautiful but not sexy fit within that dynamic to me — the fire for her comes from rage, from drama, from rivalry.
Rose: That take of her as a beautiful but sexless object actually works in this film, because it turns her into this prize to be won for the boys, whose real base human desire is for each other, and she’s the avatar through which they can perform and partake in it. The restraint of her performance was thrilling and helps the film stay tense for nearly the entirety of its runtime. The tension is what makes this feel like a thriller rather than a sports movie, and it was done masterfully.
The score did a lot of heavy lifting there, although I’m curious if you felt like it was too loud in certain moments. I felt like I understood where Guadagnino was coming from—the score coming in so hot during those intense dialogue scenes helps them mirror the tennis scenes, and allows us to understand that their banter is just an extension of the never-ending game they’re playing. But a few times I was like…what did he say?
Hunter: The score is so over-the-top but isn’t all of it? I mean POV I’m the tennis ball! It felt truer to the mood of the movie than any time period or the character’s tastes. Everyone is obsessed with realism, with pointing out little inconsistencies, with how “good” the tennis looked or whatever. Who cares! The music spoke to the feverish madness of it all, the way the entire movie felt on the verge of careening out of control, the intensity of everyone’s yearning.
It also made me think a lot about the May December score. I saw a lot of people say that score’s dramatic duh-duh-duhhhhs were kooky, that a score that announces itself so often took them out of the moment. But what a meta-commentary that was: here is a serious story of identity and desire and abuse and coming of age, contrasted against the tawdry, tabloid way the movie tries not to present it (but the way Natalie Portman’s character is always on the verge of). I love a beautiful Alexandre Desplat score, god bless the booming Hans Zimmer scores, but lovely and overwhelming are not the only options.
Remind me: were you a Past Lives-er? That movie is being brought up quite a bit because the writer-director of Past Lives is married to the writer of Challengers. It’s a fun detail, but ultimately irrelevant to the way I think about both movies.
Rose: I loved Past Lives, but they’re very different movies. The fact that the screenwriters are married is a fun tidbit for Discussing Film (and, potentially, DisBussing Film), and yes there are trios in both films, but otherwise…what do those stories have to do with each other? Nothing. I guess maybe the same people are rating them high on Letterboxd, and that’s enough. I think if you’re looking back at movies from 2023, Challengers has much more in common with Saltburn. And even though I loved Saltburn4, Challengers makes it look like an episode of The Big Bang Theory…I’ve actually never watched The Big Bang Theory. OK, an episode of The Idol.
Hunter: Now darling what does Challengers have in common with Saltburn other than both movies star human beings? They both feature scenes … outside? They get drunk on a tennis court in Saltburn and the Challengers trio gets drunk at a rich person’s house?
Rose: They’re both about desire and hot people using each other! But the desire of Saltburn is so convoluted and the desire of Challengers is so frank. I remember all those early trailer reactions that were like, “the boys better kiss.” And they did! Challengers is so frank in how horny it is: for sex, for tennis, for winning. I love that the enduring shot of this movie won’t be the boys kissing, but Zendaya leaning back to watch them kiss after literally smushing their heads together like me playing with my Lord of the Rings action figures. Both in-movie and IRL, it’s her world and we’re just serving (tennis context and beyond) in it.
Hunter: Hmm. If by “the desire of Saltburn is so convoluted” you mean that it literally does not make sense even within the world of the movie, sure. The boys kissing is sexy, of course, but there are so many other moments that made me … sit a little bit differently in my seat. Patrick pulling the stool Art’s sitting in closer to him, them biting each other’s churros, the way Art lounges and Patrick springs into action. Did this movie need a big fucking scene? Maybe. But I think it was fine without it. The churros scene, I’ve never wanted to be a piece of furniture so bad in my life. It had more eroticism than a scene of a dozen thrusts in Bridgerton, or Chris Pine literally watching Florence Pugh and Harry Styles fuck in Don’t Worry Darling. (Only top of mind because Harry Styles fans are, I guess, getting mad at me right now? Unclear, honestly.)
Last question: what’s your Challengers fuck, marry, kill?
Rose: Fuck Art, marry Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, kill that damn I TOLD YA t-shirt everyone will be wearing on Halloween. How about you?
Hunter: Fuck Patrick, marry Luca, kill pickleball!
More from Mall Goth: Florida!!! Musings on 'Tortured Poets,' 'Civil War,' and going blonde for summer.
More from Hung Up: We’ll Always Have Chance The Rapper’s Post About His Wife Decorating Their Patio
More from Hung Up and Mall Goth together: Darling, I’m Worried
You can follow Rose on Twitter, IG, and TikTok. And you should!
Devoted Hung Up readers will recall that I profiled Zendaya in 2021 for the cover of GQ.
Mall Goth is excellent, and Rose’s novel “Best Woman” was just announced! Everyone say congratulations Rose!
One of my favorite things about Connor Roy in Succession was that I think he referenced loving this movie once a season. It is wild and weird and I will never give it up.
This was the *perfect* post-challengers climax cigarrette I needed
“Hunter: Now darling what does Challengers have in common with Saltburn other than both movies star human beings? They both feature scenes … outside? They get drunk on a tennis court in Saltburn and the Challengers trio gets drunk at a rich person’s house?” I’m sorry this had me CACKLING!! I loved this so much—more Hung Up x Mall Goth crossovers pleaseeee! And congrats to Rose! I am awaiting the preorder link!