TIGHTLY STRUNG

If directors Ron Shelton and David Fincher teamed up to make a sports version of 'The Social Network', it would probably look something like Luca Guadagnino's 'Challengers' (2024) which has currently secured top slot at the American Box Office. Of course, having Trent Raznor's similar industrial synth, electronic pop score thudding away throughout the two hour feature reinforces the obvious comparison between 'The Social Network' and 'Challengers' as does the editing style that zips back and forth like a fizzing tennis ball across the non-linear timeline of the story just like Fincher's 'Zuckerberg' movie.

There have been plenty of love/sex triangle movies throughout film history from Lubitsch's 'Design For Living' (1933) to Schlesinger's 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' (1971) and Alfonso Cuarón's 'Y tu mamá también' (2001). 'Challengers' is a welcome addition to this 'genre' of sorts, both familiar and different in its own variation on the polyamorous theme. By adding the game, set and match structure of tennis to its structure, it finds a unique form of symbiosis between sport and film, enhanced by the constant back and forth of the timeline which I construed as being the internal memories of the past playing out in the present in the minds of the characters on and off the court, fuelling the rhythm of both the game and the film itself.

It also occurred to me whilst watching the film that it seems lately as if there is a nostalgia zeitgeist at play in the film industry with a tangible yearning to return to more character driven 1970s-style movies. What with Alexander Payne's recent 'The Holdovers' (2023) harking back to the small, intimate movies of Hal Ashby and now Guadagnino's 'Challengers' channelling an early Mike Nichols vibe, we can see that the ultimate special effect right now is not CGI at all but human stories with flawed and all too human characters. Perhaps this is partly due to the existential fear and anticipation of AI taking over the story telling business with its advanced content creation technology and platforms advancing at an unprecedented rate. One thing robots may struggle to achieve in their writing, however, maybe be the empathy required to tap into humans most basic emotions and petty triggers, the type of things that Woody Allen and Coen Brothers have done so well through the decades as well as so many other great writers and directors outside of Hollywood and across the world.

To a degree that same ability to put fragile human emotions under the microscope played out here in Guadagnino's film although, even as I admired the slick directorial approach to 'Challengers', I came away feeling as if the story beats had rarely enough space to breathe at times and subsequently the emotion I wanted to invest in the characters suffered as a consequence. It probably didn't help that not one of the central characters were particularly likeable or indeed that interesting. This seems to be a common trait of Guadagnino's films from 'A Bigger Splash' (2015) to 'Call Me By Your Name' (2017) which have all have style but somehow lack charm or deep emotional engagement with their characters which may seem ironic in relation to my points raised above concerning AI, though Mike Nichols also shared a similar glacial approach to observing human absurdities in films such as 'The Graduate' (1967) and 'Carnal Knowledge' (1971). Perhaps then it's the ugliness and often callous pettiness of the characters in 'Challengers' that makes them all too human rather than artificial which makes me wonder whether the emotional game playing in the movie really does successfully reflect both the metaphor of tennis and the concept of winning itself where one absolutely needs to control emotions under intense pressure in order to score vital points. Those that don't tend to over hit their shots.

Ultimately, 'Challengers' secures its match victory but at times seems a little too tightly strung.