Review: CHALLENGERS (2024)

Fuck Aaron Sorkins newly-announced January 6th de-facto The Social Network follow-up because this has it all: white polos and athleisure, Ivy League jawbones grinding like Roman friezes plotting destruction, neurotic overachievers speaking to each other in their secret eerily erotic languages (switch code for tennis), golden gods on the quad that fall back into adolescent- mind-games in their dorms/hotel rooms, hilarious, prismatic dialogue bouncing between Zendaya’s Mother Theresa-gone bad, Josh O’Connors shit-eating, always grinning here-for-good-time-not-a-long-time impish Machievallian, and Mike Faist’s sun-kissed tortured good-boy. Then there’s the ricocheting structure, the macroscopic sports- sequences and brands-oh god the brands- adrift in Mukdeeproms uncanny-valley car-commercial digital textures, and of course, Reznor and Ross splitting the court in half with thundering acid house (seriously, it’s as if the whole score is a sequel to In Motion from The Social Network) Come on, Fincher. Guadagnino's eating your lunch
 
When it comes to matters of flesh and blood, though, instead of the existential fugue Fincher conjures in TSN (those Rashomon-like rhythms that build until the does-it-even-matter shoe drops), here Guadanigno has found a premise to root his sensuality in the split-second moments, the eye-contact that breaks glass, the swing of a racket, the gesture. In fact, all the silent sexual gestures of his filmography- A Bigger Splash’s Dakota Johnson laying on the rocks, Call Me By Your Name’s Armie Hammer offering the arm of washed-up statue to Chalamet- feel like try-outs before the unashamed symbolism of this one. And when he chops up the frames ala his Suspiria climax it’s as didactic as it is irresistible; now and always, Luca is obsessed with the infinitesimal moment desire takes hold, when desire overrides everything, when desire slows us down and freezes us in its grasp- asking, us, how could you not?