We're a long way off awards season - further, in fact, than Oppenheimer's July release last year - but Oscars 2025 will be the duller if Challengers isn't part of the competition. Yes, spring is a strange time to have a red-hot contender in cinemas, but the actors' strike put the kibosh on Challengers' planned release in 2023 so here we are.
The wait for this "romantic sports drama" has been worth it.
Bringing to mind the great wisdom that there's someone for everyone and two for most, Euphoria's Zendaya, The Crown's Josh O'Connor, and West Side Story's Mike Faist are the love triangle who meet as teenage tennis prodigies and still loom large in each other's lives 13 years later.
Tashi Duncan's (Zendaya) victory march to the top was halted at university by injury. She went on to become the coach, and later wife, of her college peer turned champion Art Donaldson (Mike Faist). Art is a US Open short of the Grand Slam and is trying desperately to get his mojo back as a wildcard at a challenger event in New Rochelle, New York.
On the other side of the draw is Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor), a down-at-heel journeyman whose stay in New Rochelle is expected to be characteristically brief. But Patrick used to be Art's best friend and Tashi's beau - past, present, and future are about to collide with a lot more than the $7,500 prize money at stake.
"Tennis is a relationship," says Zendaya's Tashi early on and Challengers more than makes good on that assertion over the next two hours. Having previously rummaged around the heart for 2015's A Bigger Splash and 2017's Call Me by Your Name, director Luca Guadagino now looks set to have major mainstream success in the sexiest way imaginable.
This is a showcase of actors at the top of their game as screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes' (the husband of Past Lives writer-director Celine Song) story of opportunities taken and missed unfolds, twist after twist. The tension on and off the court is as addictive as it is grown-up, with the verbal volleys every bit as exciting as the technical masterclass across the net. Your allegiances will shift throughout - it's such a blessing that the only money you'll have on this is the price of a ticket.
The two lads look a bit too old to be young in the flashbacks, but that minor points deduction isn't enough to get in the way of the fun here. Challengers is the best date movie in many a moon, a sweaty mess, all done in the best possible taste.
