‘Challengers’ is the sexiest, most thrilling tennis film

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Call Me By Your Name where he literally made the fruit forbidden, and now he turns his gaze to the competitive battles of tennis, focusing on the hormones that lie between those rackets and returns. His new Challengers (available now for rental on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV) is electrifying and raw, a film where everything is tennis and everything isn’t tennis all at once. You won’t see it coming.

(In other words: it’s an ace.) Challengers is about three young people consumed by tennis—two boys and a girl who plays far better than them—and as we see them rise and fall and stumble and be unspeakably cruel to one another, only one truth pins them in place: they can’t stop playing. Art Donaldson is good but not great. This lack of sublimity is his cross to bear, and he makes up for it by practising harder and harder, goaded on by a coach who knows better.

Patrick Zweig, his best friend and doubles partner, is unquestionably more gifted but also more erratic, less given to discipline. The film begins with Art wanting to win another Grand Slam while Patrick has to sleep in his car. The woman responsible for their trajectories is Tashi Duncan, a preternatural talent who bowls over both boys with her skills and her supreme confidence.

She knows the game while they just play it. Instantly she becomes the object of their affections. She is their Grand Slam—but she’d rather win than be won.

Zendaya, already one of the most thrilling talents of her generation, sets the screen, and the court, afire as Tashi. She echoes the relentlessness of the film’s rhythm as she pushes herself and the boys harder, her eyes speaking volumes even when just observing two men play—be it playing on court or playing the fool. West Side Story star