Tennis or At least That's What the Kids are Calling it These Days

As a young primary school kid, we were invited as a class to Wimbledon, or rather that's what I thought it was, until I was corrected years later when big Danny Stern said, "That wasn't Wimbledon, Kelly, that was just some jarg local tennis competition". Either way, where ever I was, whoever I was seeing play, my eyes took notice of the ball slamming, back and forth dialogue, the aggressive cries of "err!", and "ahh!", and of course the routine head turning left and right from the voyeurs raised above the court. Even at a young age, without the full capabilities to articulate it or explain it, all I could think to myself was, "this is all about sex". Finally, a sleazebag director has come along sharing my sentiments on the sport and with the adequate resources to project that vision on to the big screen. Can I get a hallelujah, brother!

Ladies and gentlemen, his name is Luca Guadagnino and of course he's Italian. You may know him from the time Timothee Chalamet deposited his seed on to a peach and Armie Hammer, who is not adverse to gobbling on things regular society might deem peculiar, thought it would make a tasty snack. You may know him from the follow up, an Armie Hammer biopic, where he's played by Timothee Chalamet and depicted as a young man travelling the country and sinking his teeth in to people. You may know him from when Twitter's favourite females went dancing and things got gnarly. You may even know him from his Italian coming of age miniseries (we don't). There is a clear pattern to his work and that would be operating within the realms of perverse pop trash or as we like to call it at Funeralopolis, "Dinner Table", since it's that kind of nonsense that is slightly off centre in tastes but still manages to invade the family home and become a big talking point.

There's a formula to making good "Dinner Table" and in truth even we don't fully understand it. Who can predict what the public will accept? How to be disgusting and outrageous whilst keeping the maximum possible audience is no easy task. Although highly revered, we don't believe in the past that Luca has been all that great at his job with just as many hits as misses.

Bones and All was too on the annoying side of twee, attempting to evoke Malick and Gordon Green alongside its horror but came as merely juvenile and immature. Despite having some of the most memorable imagery in a horror movie from recent times, his Suspiria remake is far too long with a sloppy narrative in need of serious work. Very few complaints for Call Me By Your Name though. The Psychedelic Furs slap. When it comes to Challengers, Luca has hit gold.

Actually, to put it rightly this is generational gold. The previous generation to me had Trainspotting, we had Gone Girl and Wolf of Wall Street. Not necessarily flawless films but they capture a sexy youthful hipness that defines a decade and overcomes their faults. Nobody came close to looking as hot as Margot Robbie in front of a camera and for what's left of this decade maybe no-one will outdo Zendaya in this picture. We're dealing with a movie that absolutely exudes swag in full Fincheresque fashion. Fincher's generally a master of going creepy without scaring the hoes but in many ways his most recent films Mank and The Killer were very minor and divisive. If we're being honest, I think Fincher wishes he had something so commercial and appealing as Challengers in his hands.

Challengers opens superbly, establishing our two rivals on either side of the court battling it out in the final and the umpire in charge. Then we get this wide shot and a zoom revealing a single woman in the crowd: Zendaya. The real referee of this match. She's pulling the strings. She's the reward. She's why they play. In all honesty, I've not been this fixated on an individual in the crowd at a tennis match since Alfred Hitchcock's legendary shot in Strangers on a Train. Hitch walked so Luca could run. Oddly, this isn't where the comparisons end. Both have their homoerotic undertones.

Challengers has been fairly described as a love triangle with all the sides touching. Allowing it to have this immediacy and progressive appeal that's very of the moment. Reflecting the youth's aims to be as open as possible with sexual identity and experiences.

There's an undeniable naughtiness and cheekiness about the whole thing. Josh O'Connor will flash these evil allknowing smiles and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's electronic score just seems wired in to his brain coming in at just the right times as an extension of the character. There's no way we can avoid not talking about Reznor and Ross's score, which follows right on from Kraftwerk's Tour De France with the regular returns to a central catchy motif and erotic panting but embodies the newer trends of EBM, electro and acid techno.

Those who believed the double act was coming too routine and formulaic or struggling to fully figure out how to work the jazz angles like Bowie and Badalamenti, listen up because this is their most innovative work since The Social Network. That score changed the soundscapes of films back in 2010 and they've done it again here. Every single track is the sound of the summer and it may well go on to be as famous as the Trainspotting soundtrack became. Boys Noize has mixed the album of the year so it flows perfectly, keeping you in the vibe of Challengers. What's the vibe of Challengers? Misbehaving so badly the umpires have to deduct points from you like those machines in Demolition Man that fine you for foul language. The badder you are, the better you are.

Of all the tracks on the score, the standout moment for me is The Signal Bringing me right back to the films particular sense of mischief. The two boys in the movie come up with a little signal that if O'Connor slept with Zendaya he has to use a specific serve. I don't have a clue about tennis so I don't understand any of this but the place erupted when he brought out that serve and I assumed what it meant. The second time, I totally missed it, which was stupid considering they literally draw your attention to it with the time wasting.

Since I'm not clued up on what could potentially considered the dark arts of tennis, I turned to The Highwayman sat next to me, who has a little more knowledge of the sport and she had to explain this whole tennis malarkey. Personally, I just came for the sex. After her explaining it to me, I have to say this might be the single horniest act I've ever witnessed in a cinema. Going way beyond genitals and in to genuine erotica. Cannot recall anything so blunt and appalling being released on the unprepared general public since 2Pac dropped Hit Em Up with the infamous line, "I fucked your bitch".

Back to that love triangle though. As soon as Zendaya pulls away and takes leave of absence, the boys are attacking each other's faces or stealing one another's churros (unfathomably phallic). Structurally, it recalls Fincher's Social Network with the majority of the film being told in flashback. Every turn had me hooked for more. Reznor and Ross's score would kick in and I'd be begging for more juicy details, anything to keep this rollercoaster of a movie going. A particular favourite being the steamy sauna scene. The two boys stretching out, showing each other their cocks, sizing each other up and just when you think the games over, there's more twists and turns. Late drama in Fergie time as my fellow football fans would know all about.

Essentially, my warming to a film like this is that it's aware of itself being this game and has very little actually to do with tennis. Instead, it's a 130 minute sex film filled with constant mind games that Jose Mourinho would approve of. Mature too in its approach by barely even needing to focus on explicit sexual scenes and not bowing down to more generic rom com conventions.

There's this stunning scene in which Zendaya and O'Connor switch between sexual positions and stretching with their dialogue firmly on tennis when it should be about sex. Memorably, Zendaya says, "I'm always talking about tennis" (that's like me in the sack, pumping and reviewing movies without hesitation, it never ends). What's the famous quote, usually wrongly attributed to Oscar Wilde? "Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power". Although, here it's more like, "everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about tennis". For Jacob Kelly, it's "everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about movies" and you can put that on my gravestone.

Luca highlights that drive for power and control that comes with competition (and sex). O'Connor and Zendaya came to cook. They knew the game at hand and how to play it. Faist's character came in thinking this was all about love and romance. What an utter fool. In this arena, you leave all that at the door. I found his naivety more pathetic than the other characters atrocious acts. Even when you think though that all these characters are bad or evil, they're highly watchable in their drive for creativity and so it all comes back around by the end that you like them all in some weird way because they got the best out of each other eventually.

This is the arts and as much as people want to fool themselves, artists aren't always good or nice people. Personality wise some of these people have to be cold, selfmotivated, indulgent and arrogant to produce that which becomes so celebrated. The end justifies the means with the overall intention being to reach their peaks professionally. That's why it's such a win of an ending.

All the way through Challengers, I had this gigantic fear that they would go a lazy route and pick to either emphasise who the good and bad characters or to have them make up with each other in the last believable way. Thereby killing the mature sex game we all rocked up for in favour of a proper sell-out rom com deal. I am here to report they resolve their issues in the best possible manner that is far from cheap. Everybody gains something and nothing is undeserved.

In fact, it all comes back to Zendaya's belief that tennis is mainly bullshit, a massive joke, a waste of time, apart from the 2 decent minutes where the players actually seem in conversation with each other, communicating through their back and forth strokes (the sexual element). The chemistry is all that matters. Challengers is this long sprawling interconnected story spanning decades but it never loses sight of that vision.

Out came the Zendaya scream that could stir a billion hard-ons. Our two boys embraced each other again. Trent came in singing, "compress, repress" and the credits rolled. I was so ecstatic and lost in the overall joy of it, that I let up and started crip walking down the isles singing along with the Nine Inch Nails front man. Maybe we all won that day. I don't care for tennis, never have, never will but as for sex? Well, I can play that game all day!

Overall Score:

5/5