Challengers Is the Horny Tennis Movie Hollywood Needs
For the last decade or two, Hollywood, like the rest of America, has been marked by a sex recession. Depictions of lovemaking, not long ago a fixture of big-screen productions, all but went away. Nudity practically disappeared, especially in big-budget productions. The number of studio-produced romantic comedies dwindled. Children’s films dropped lovestruck princess plots that resolved in weddings for journeys of empowerment and therapeutic self-discovery.
There were myriad reasons for the shift: Some of it was a product of #MeToo, and a growing sense that on-screen sex and nudity were both unnecessary and exploitative. Some of it resulted from the rise of superhero movies and the decline in films targeting adult moviegoers. Ironically, the shift occurred in concurrence with changes in physical appearance, especially among male leads, who bulked up and got shredded for larger-than-life superhero roles. The result was a curious on-screen world in which, as one writer put it, “everyone is beautiful and no one is horny.”
So it is somewhat jolting to see a movie in which everyone is beautiful and also very, very horny. Indeed, sexual desire, and the way it infuses so many aspects of one’s life, is the subject of Challengers. It’s a delirious, delightful, love-triangle romp—not only the horniest tennis movie you’ll ever see, but the horny tennis movie Hollywood needs.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino from a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers tells the story of three ambitious tennis players who love and lust for each other. There’s Mike Faist as Art Donaldson, the studious nice guy of the group. There’s Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig, the charming-but-erratic striver who can’t quite get his act together. And connecting the two, there’s Tashi Duncan, played by Zendaya, a should-have-been superstar who switched to coaching after an injury derailed her tennis career.
Kuritzkes’ script flitters back and forth in time, taking viewers from the moment the trio first meets at a juniors tournament to the peak of
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