Challengers on TFX: return (finally!) winning for Guadagnino (critic)

Between racing hearts and exhaustion of bodies against the backdrop of tennis, the director of Call Me by Your Name films a love triangle, embodied by a trio of major actors.

A little more than two years after its cinema release, Challengers is broadcast for the first time unencrypted on French television, this Tuesday evening on TFX (then available for streaming on tf1plus). Nearly 500,000 spectators came to French theaters to witness the exchanges between Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, who also won over the Première editorial team. Our review:

Since Call Me by Your Name, between a knockout remake of Suspiria and an indigestible cannibalistic romance (Bones and all), Luca Guadagnino’s star has faded. A free fall that comes to stop this Challengers. We follow Tashi, a former tennis prodigy who became, after an injury that ended her career, the coach of her husband, a champion in decline, whose attempt at a comeback involves a reunion and a victory against his former best friend who is none other than… Tashi’s ex. Two boys, one girl, three possibilities.

But much more than the orchestration of this ride on the tender map in flashbacks and flashforwards, it is through his way of capturing the ruthless aspect of high-level sport that Guadagnino hits the mark. The fear of defeat, the psychological exhaustion it causes and the fact that, unlike romantic relationships, there is always a winner and a loser in the end, with no way back. In Challengers, the dialogues sound like uppercuts, the exchanges on lessons (impeccably staged) like boxing fights calling for a knockout. The sensuality of moments of romantic seduction contrasts with the fatigue of bodies on the courts.

The Zendaya-Mike Faist-Josh O’Connor trio plays wonderfully with these contrasts throughout a story which has the merit of not locking Trisha into the role of the woman who destroys the friendship between two men. Except in its final stretch where suddenly everything goes wrong – including images of the matches – to flirt dangerously with this cliché, without spoiling everything that precedes.

Of Luca Guadagnino. With Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor… Duration 2h10.