Photo: Niko Tavernise/MGM Pictures Warning: Spoilers for the movie Challengers below. Zendaya and her white boys, sitting in a tree: K-I-S-S-I-N-G. But is that all they’re up to? When MGM dropped the trailer for Challengers, the new tennis drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, it teased virtuosic backhands, sleek courtside attire, and triangular sexual chemistry between …
“The ball is the ephemeral, invisible force of desire,” says Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All. “I wanted to show desire going back and forth.” Director Luca Guadagnino on the set of Challengers. Photo: AP The result, by a score of about six-love, is the love triangle of …
MGM I’ll confess to going into Challengers not knowing what my reaction would be. The cast and trailer certainly intrigued me, without question. On the flip side, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has yet to fully land for me. I find myself often at arm’s length from his work, for one reason or another. So, it was …
Anyone who’s ever played tennis knows the game starts with love and escalates fast. In Luca Guadagnino’s hip, sexy and ridiculously overheated “Challengers,” the rivals are former doubles partners Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), best friends since the age of 12, who went their separate ways after both players fell for …
3.5/5 stars Luca Guadagnino swaps cannibals for tennis balls in Challengers, a breezy romantic drama starring Zendaya. The Italian director goes from his first American film, 2022’s Bones and All, directly into his second, although the two could not be more different. While the first was grimy and grisly, this is sexy and stormy, and …