Challengers

 

Director Luca Guadagnino

Mike Faist, Zendaya, and Josh O'Connor

The director with Zendaya

CHALLENGERS        C-                                                                                                              USA  Italy  (131 mi)  2024  d: Luca Guadagnino

JULES AND JIM (1962) this isn’t.  Not sure what the appeal of this movie is, hyped by the money train of gala fashion statements from the press tour, as it’s about as unsubtle as any film seen in years, hitting every cliché imaginable, even becoming a parody of itself, finding no new ground to explore, and can often feel laughable in the overly contrived melodrama, using the often intrusive, adrenaline-pumping, techno house music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that sounds right out of the playbook of Giorgio Moroder, feeling more at home at a Monster Truck Jam echoing through an enormous stadium, pushing unsustainable levels of tension that never actually seem to exist.  Nonetheless, this film is a box office hit, easily the director’s most commercial effort yet, despite its propensity for abstraction, currently the #3 film in America behind Ryan Gosling’s THE FALL GUY and the latest STAR WARS adventure, receiving all kinds of critical superlatives, where it plays out like an action movie, mixing elements of an old-fashioned Sergio Leone western, with a good guy versus a bad guy, leading to an ultimate showdown, yet there’s little to no action.  The interest of the film seems to have been driven by a promotional teaser trailer of Zendaya sitting on the bed of a hotel room surrounded by two cute guys as they’re about to engage in a sexual ménage à trois, Challengers | Official Trailer YouTube (2:15), set to the salacious use of Rihanna - S&M YouTube (4:04), no doubt answering the question whether sex still sells in 2024, with Zendaya uttering the line, “I’m taking such good care of my little white boys.”  Setting the drama inside a sports movie leaves us scratching our heads, as it’s not really about tennis at all, conjuring up the dark undertones of Woody Allen’s MATCH POINT (2005), or the ratcheted up tension from Hitchcock, A Face in the Crowd - Strangers on a Train (7/10) Movie CLIP ... YouTube (3:11), but it lacks that kind of psychosexual intrigue and instead feels more like an anti-sports movie, made by someone who doesn’t understand the sport, as it derides the game itself, concentrating instead on the head games that people supposedly play, all the while over-indulging in slow motion shots and trick photography, where the stylistic choices, like the perspective from a tennis ball or from beneath the ground looking up at the server, can be quite kitschy, often looking more like a video game.  Perhaps the biggest flaw is just how unlikable the protagonists are, which is by design, as they are toxic personalities, arrogant and extremely privileged, with an underlying disdain for others, as they’re incapable of empathy, leaving viewers intentionally alienated and distanced, undeserving of our sympathy, feeling all about manipulation, where ethics take a back seat to personal ambition, where we’re fed sports dribble like, “This is about winning the points that matter.”  Written by playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes, partner of filmmaker Celine Song who directed Past Lives (2023), another film with a love triangle, collaborating on their next film together as well, QUEER, an adaptation of Beat writer William S. Burrough’s 1985 novel, but the script just never takes us anywhere, lacking narrative finesse, told out of order with continual interruptions, unfolding over 13 years from 2006 to 2019, with the viewer being carried back and forth through time as if it were a tennis ball passing from one side of the court to the other, leaving us in a hollow no-man’s land of what-if’s and could-be’s.  Despite the passage of time, the characters never change at all, but are exactly as we see them in the beginning, showing no signs of development or growth.  Nothing in this film actually delivers, coming up dreadfully short as a sports movie, a sex comedy, a psychodrama, a puzzle film, or a relationship drama, while also failing as a character study, where there’s surprisingly little passion, staying mostly on the surface, so it’s a huge surprise that this is such a critically acclaimed hit, where people are supposedly moved by this, yet it feels more like a manipulative farce, a kind of battle of the sexes, where there are no winners in this movie, which feels dreadfully disappointing, yet that may actually be the point.  First of all, Zendaya was simply brilliant in Sam Levinson’s 2021 #7 Film of the Year Malcom & Marie, much sexier, much smarter, and much more compelling in that role, where her character actually mattered long after the film was over.  Not so here, where the characters are simply forgettable, yet it hits the two boys and a girl love triangle scenario, promising a unique drama that supposedly pushes the boundaries of sex and romance, adding a unique titillation, except it doesn’t, ending up in the same infamous territory as Léos Carax’s POLA X (1999), which featured big stars in steamy roles, yet landed with an empty thud.     

A better tennis/action movie was the television drama I Spy (1965-68), featuring the salt and pepper male combo of Robert Culp and Bill Cosby as undercover intelligence agents posing as a professional tennis player (Culp) and his trainer.  That actually respected the game far more than this does, which exaggerates the physical extremes of the sport, with all its grunts, racket smashes, and thunderous sound effects whenever they hit the ball, never really showing any real athletic prowess, where the operatic excess only works to the film’s detriment.  According to Kuritzkes in Business Insider, this is at least partially inspired by the Serena Williams meltdown at the 2018 U.S Open when she was defeated by 20-year old Naomi Osaka after Williams was charged with three code violations for receiving coaching, racket abuse, and verbal abuse, changing the entire momentum of the match, suggesting that was an “intensely cinematic situation.”  Made by gay Italian film director Luca Guadagnino, creator of the hugely popular summer romance and idyllic gay love story Call Me By Your Name (2017), but also the overly pretentious and equally forgettable I AM LOVE (2009), the director feels mired in a genre rut following his polarizing 2018 American remake of Dario Argento’s horror thriller Suspiria (1977), where he appears to have lost his way, yet he’s raking in the bucks from American producers, in this case MGM/Warner Brothers, where Zendaya is a co-producer alongside former Sony studio head Amy Pascal.  Hollywood is so afraid of losing their audience, they are currently over-spending massively for Marvel comic action figure and super hero movies, dumbing down the product like never before, where in this case the tennis court is like a gladiator spectacle with the combatants entering the arena of the Colosseum for battle, using computer generated VFX effects to enhance an illusion of a sporting event, veering into music video territory, where the dramatic over exaggeration comes across like some Shakespearean Greek tragedy.  While every scene appears over the top, what this film lacks is a heart and soul, seemingly designed for the IMAX experience where loudness matters and big is better.  Centered around a three-set challenge match that extends throughout the length of the film between Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor from Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera), best friends since junior tennis but arch-rivals on the court and in love, much of the film is told in flashbacks as the film drifts back and forth in time, immersing us in their series of dramatic entanglements with tennis child prodigy phenom Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a rising star out of Stanford, a school that receives plenty of product endorsements, as you can’t help noticing the big bold red letters of their sports apparel.  Initially they both fall head over heels by her mix of stunning beauty and overwhelming talent on the court, yet they’re portrayed like dimwitted characters from DUMB AND DUMBER (1994), as they can’t stop staring at her, though leering may be more appropriate.  She seems to get some sort of kick out of their fanboy attention, drawing them both into her sexual lair for a threesome, which seems like a game of cunning manipulation that starts with a fascination with her but they end up groping each other when she removes herself from the picture, with suggestions that this is not strictly heterosexual.  While they claim to be no more than friends, the film drifts into homoerotic territory, but it’s only implied, with plenty of subtext to interpret, never really delivering on that end, delving more into the repressed psyche of the main characters, becoming a film about what drives an athlete, like a buddy movie with inferences of something more.  Claiming she doesn’t want to be a homewrecker, she moves on with her life, and is destined to become a top player until a career-ending injury knocks her out of the game, making use of her sports acumen and psychological insight to become a sought after coach, as she believes every match is about “a relationship” with the opponent.  While the two guys are in a perpetual Sisyphean struggle for her attention, shrugging off the hills and valleys of emotional devastation when they lose, the film drifts into the lurid world behind-the-scenes, suggesting that’s where the drama is, not on the tennis court.  That said, it still spends an inordinate amount of time attempting to build drama on the court, where tennis appears to be a metaphor for pent-up desire, but in a competitive form, featuring crushing volleys with the fury of a WWE wrestling smackdown, then slowed to a crawl between points, with sweat dripping and laser-like stares, only to fizzle out when it matters.      

Improbably, the film is shot by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s longtime cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who uses obsessive close-ups and the most bizarre and unusual camera angles, perhaps capturing the emotional discombobulation where there is little equilibrium, as nerves are constantly on edge and knocked askew.  This altered perspective reveals the kind of topsy turvy world of professional sport, where one moment you’re among the best in the world, yet in the next it’s all behind you, where you’re struggling to find your identity, which has always been connected to any sport.  The overall central premise of the film is how the mastermind Tashi plays Patrick and Art off of each other, both on and off the court, much more talented than either of them, but forced to sublimate her desires through them, relishing her role as the puppetmaster pulling the strings behind the scenes, yet it unravels in the worst cliché’s, as inflamed desires are reignited in a classic Hollywood windstorm, with trash swirling through the city streets, where winning at tennis means winning the girl, while losing only accentuates all her worst fears about you.  Despite all the talk about how sexy the movie is, suggesting eroticism has returned to the movies post Covid, there’s really no actual sex to speak of, and no nudity except the male anatomy in a locker room setting.  Instead there are swaggering remarks, like trash talk, which always reference power dynamics, with a heightened presence of corporate sponsors, where giant billboards are seen everywhere behind the players, generating very little drama between the onscreen protagonists, which is remarkable for a mainstream movie with more than a two-hour running time.  So what is the compelling factor?  Apparently it’s all about hype and advertising, setting a tone for what this is supposed to be, planting the seed in the minds of viewers, repeatedly telling them what to expect, like the current political practice of repeating a lie so many times until you start to believe it.  It’s hard to believe that actually works in this day and age, yet social media is the driving force behind the media frenzy, and there’s nothing, literally no power on earth holding tweets accountable for the truth.  The heavy-handed nature of the movie gets so monotonous and stupidly repetitive that it’s actually a good film to walk out on, as it simply defies expectations, never even attempting to provide any hint of emotional honesty or cinematic tension, as it’s just a curious effort, to say the least, and something of a nightmare to watch, lost in its own jagged narrative structure and technical wizardry, feeling like all the air has been sucked out of the room.  Cutting back and forth in different time periods, yet supposedly taking place during a decisive tennis match, the narrative continually fills in the back story through flashbacks, à la Mildred Pierce (1945), revealing enough about the three central characters to suggest none of them are worth making a movie about, and yet that’s exactly what Guadagnino has done.  It’s a sad comment on what movies have come to, now so easily accessible through streaming platforms, where you don’t even have to leave your home anymore, suggesting television may actually be winning this battle, though the flipside is streaming services are now typically editing, altering, or censoring movies.  I can count on one hand the number of films I actually wanted to go to a theater to see from this top 100 grossing films of a year ago, 2023 Worldwide Box Office, where most of them are utterly forgettable.  Who is clamoring for all that other crap?  Cinephiles should be appalled.  In earlier generations, like Truffaut and Godard and others, spending time at the local cinematheque watching movies from every era was part of our cinematic education, a vehicle to expanding our artistic appreciation, widening our international horizons, while catching lurid movies on late night television only added to the mystique.  But now that movie theaters themselves show TV commercials before the show, with endless trailers of mind-numbing value, none of which you actually want to see, the era of film festivals and their capacity to provoke thoughtful evaluation may be over, replaced by films like this, which we’re told is a “triumph of filmmaking.”  Unlike other films that we’d eagerly sit through again, like rereading one of our favorite books, it’s hard to imagine sitting through this hot mess of a movie again, even if it plays commercial free on television, as there’s just nothing there.   

Call Me By Your Name

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME            B+                

Italy  France  Brazil  USA  (132 mi)  2017  d:  Luca Guadagnino     Official Facebook

A painterly envisioned fantasy of a sunny Italian romance between two young scholars living under the same roof one sun-kissed summer, playing out in languid fashion, using the world of academia as a doorway to get into one another’s pants, seen as an idyllic gay affair taking place within the rural beauty of a small Italian village in the northern Lombardian region, where bicycles seem to lure them away into the undiscovered regions of their imaginations, going on day-long excursions together, discovering tiny roads, each an avenue to unlimited enchantment, literally frolicking in the many diverse swimming holes of the region.  This all plays out like an embellished memory, perhaps too good to be true, as if recalling the most idyllic way to spend a summer rhapsody, where the director of I AM LOVE (2009) seems to make films that always search for that perfect moment.  Less pretentious than his earlier work (actually showing stylistic restraint), this is still an exposé of that unreachable territory that only the super-rich can experience, as who else bides away their time like this, wiling away every summer afternoon as if in suspended animation, in such exotic territory without so much as a single thought shown for what it all costs.  Yet daily, there are sumptuous breakfasts and dinners prepared daily, often eating outside under the trees in an idyllic existence, yet never once do we see anyone shopping for this surplus of food that seems to appear as if by magic.  While there are fruit orchards outside their door, where one can simply pick off the vine to their heart’s content, what we see here is an endless bacchanalian party or feast that seems to never end, but simply extends from one day to the next.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, matters of the flesh go hand in hand with such Dionysian delights, and at least in this film, there are no obstacles in the way, so it’s all fertile territory to explore an idealized gay romance, though this is a gay love story without any traces of actual gay sex, not at all unintentional, by the way, as this is an acclaimed film whose intention is not to turn off a mainstream audience.  Accordingly, one has to acknowledge the intentional inoffensive timidity associated with this choice, as neither character actually identifies with being gay, while it’s an openly gay director (along with gay screenwriter James Ivory) adapting the 2007 work of a straight American author, André Aciman, who grew up in a French-speaking household in Egypt, but never had a gay relationship in his life ("How Can a Straight Man Write So Well about Gay Sex?" by Marritz ...), using straight actors in the prominent roles, so really, this is all a mirage, where nothing is remotely real, yet it’s the year’s most anticipated mainstream gay film, while what is easily the best gay film of the year, Robin Campillo’s BPM (Beats Per Minute) (120 battements par minute) (2017) is clearly overlooked, playing for only a single week in Chicago before leaving the theaters, where few have even had a chance to actually see that film, though it won the Grand Prix (2^nd place) at Cannes. 

So this film comes with plenty of fanfare, loads of financial backing, and will be around for months, already nominated for a host of awards, where the book was embraced and beloved by gay audiences around the world, living vicariously through the pages, as it elevates gay love to an anointed status, like a special privilege that goes back to the Greeks, where a Western culture of artistic works filling museums around the world embrace the male figure in all its glory.  Accordingly, the lively opening credit sequence does much the same thing, using sculpture to identify the male human anatomy, like pictures from a museum exhibit, identifying what will become the centerpiece of the story.  Despite all this foreshadowing, the film is set in a heterosexual world, where gays are blatantly laughed at and ridiculed in the only appearance of an older outwardly gay couple in the film, that happens to include, oddly enough, author André Aciman, showing the cruel and intolerant mentality of the times.  Designed as an overly sensuous experience throughout, mostly shot in the director’s hometown of Crema, Lombardy, the sumptuous cinematography is provided by none other than Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who shot Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films up until his Cannes Palme d’Or winning UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), most recently shooting the Miguel Gomes ARABIAN NIGHTS TRILOGY (2015).  Set in the recent past of 1983, an era without Internet or cellphones, where the intellect was challenged by serious reading, which is the main pastime throughout all seasons of the year, with characters forever holding books in their hands wherever they go, much as people today remain connected to their cellphones.  At the outset, a young American graduate student arrives, Armie Hammer as Oliver, though he will forever be associated as the Winklevoss twins in David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010).  He is greeted by the host family, including Michael Stuhlbarg as a noted Professor of Archaeology and his multi-lingual wife, Amira Casar (a British actress who speaks French through most of the film), in what is a summer tradition at their cozy villa in the countryside, where the newly arrived guest takes the room of their moody introspective teenage son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet, among the best performances of the year), who moves to a guest room next door, sharing an adjoining bathroom.  At first put off by his overconfidence and perceived arrogance, as the guy is perfect in every way, the attraction of all eyes, including a brief scene playing volleyball, Call Me by Your Name clip YouTube (1:13), or later in the town square on the dance floor to the music of The Psychedelic Furs - Love My Way - YouTube (3:31), which plays again at the end of the film in an entirely different context, where he quickly picks up a young girl closer to Elio’s age, smitten by his good looks.  While they are polar opposites, as Oliver is an extrovert that loves to be the center of attention, Elio is more of a shy bookworm, though he is happily in the midst of a summer fling with a cute French girl his age, Marzia (Esther Garrel), who also comes each summer to visit.

With shirtless male torso’s as the featured attraction, almost always accompanied by wearing shades, the typical means of transport is riding bikes, either into town to run errands or dawdling through the countryside, as “the boys” spend more time together, taking long walks or going swimming in a nearby stream, with the film eventually identifying with a coming-of-age Elio, much of it wordlessly, as he exhibits a stream-of-conscious yearning and starts fantasizing about Oliver, smelling his clothes, even his swimming trunks while masturbating (which he does often), eventually developing an unmistakable chemistry together that does not go unnoticed.  What’s perhaps more surprising is how they are mirror images of one another, with nearly identical intellects, yet Elio is clearly the younger and more tender version, where his youthful exuberance is reflected through impressionistic piano music, playing various versions of a Bach chorale, literally his interpretation of different composer’s styles, Johann Sebastian Bach - Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV 140, W ... YouTube (5:14), or the more jubilant, 01 - Hallelujah Junction - 1st movement - John Adams (Call ... - YouTube (7:10), while various interludes by Satie or Ravel play throughout, offering a dreamlike feel of erupting emotions.  While a few kisses are exchanged, Oliver doesn’t wish to lead the kid on, thinking discretion is required, as he’s a guest.  But all that changes in a brief little scene that hints at more, Call me by your name clip "You know what things"  YouTube (1:30), with Oliver leaving a note to meet him in his bedroom at midnight.  All through the day, time couldn’t be more lethargic for Elio, as it seems to be standing still, never approaching the bewitching hour, so he spends the day with Marzia, actually having sex with her for the very first time, feeling transported and exhilarated, yet all that is just the appetizer for the main course, which is expressed through youthful enthusiasm and a sense of urgency, very much in a Romeo and Juliet mode, enraptured by first love, accentuated by the soft, acoustical indie music of Sufjan Stevens, Mystery of Love - Sufjan Stevens (Full Version) - YouTube (4:06), which adds a poetic tinge in the air.  Strangely, Oliver invites him to call out their own names during sex, which becomes their identifier, a secret code for their intimacy, as if what they’re really in love with is themselves.  This kind of idealized love continues, spending Oliver’s last few days together in a nearby picturesque town where they can go hiking up to a magnificent waterfall, all eloquently presented, where the idea is accepting oneself in harmony with the natural world, rarely coming together with this kind of youthful ecstasy, before sending Oliver back to America on a train.  Heartbroken and unable to contain his feelings, Elio has to reenter the world as a changed person, transformed into something new, but as a kid, he’s not sure what that is.  Arguably the best scenes come near the end, where Elio has a talk with his father, who is fully aware of what transpired, encouraging his son to wholeheartedly embrace the experience, as it’s something rare, especially when both participants are so intelligent and “good,” where he’s urged to “remember everything.”  It’s a stunner of an acceptance speech, equally rare, as this father is accepting of his son no matter what happens, where the final scene is equally captivating, layered in a gorgeous wintry snow falling outside the windows, with a longheld shot of Elio’s consternated face that plays all the way through the end credits, sitting tearfully in front of a bristling fire, where anyone who has lost a love can surely identify, playing out with a remarkably expressive poetic tenderness, with echoes of Sufjan Stevens intensifying the personal anguish, Visions of Gideon - YouTube (4:07).