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Challengers

Luca Guadagnino hits the court
Universal Pictures Australia
by
ABR Arts 18 April 2024

Challengers

Luca Guadagnino hits the court
Universal Pictures Australia
by
ABR Arts 18 April 2024
Zendaya as Tashi and Josh O’Connor as Patrick (courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)
Zendaya as Tashi and Josh O’Connor as Patrick (courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

The game of tennis is simple: hit the ball over the net and make sure it lands between the straight white lines. It’s simpler than life, though tennis, like all other sports, is designed to act as its mirror – spectator sports are enticing because they lay bare the emotions that the complications of real life often obfuscate. Tennis is weaponised in this same way in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, a psychosexual sports drama that marries the mercuriality of love and lust with the capriciousness of a sport oft won by millimetres.