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Luca Guadagnino is most in his element making elegant, beautifully shot melodramas — stories of family-ruining love affairs, murderous cover-ups, and secret romances. But he’s spent nearly all of the last decade directing movies forgoing his inclination for glamorous soap opera for the grottiness of the horror genre, successfully with an austere remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria (2018) and less so with the dour, cannibalistic love story Bones and All (2022). Guadagnino’s latest, Challengers, doesn’t merely mark a return to the kind of dramatically rich, overheated filmmaking he excels at — it’s also one of his finest, most straightforwardly entertaining projects.

Written with wit and dramatic brio by Justin Kuritzkes, it’s a decades-spanning romantic epic set in the hyper-competitive, image-forward world of professional tennis. It starts in August 2019, at a lower-tier Challenger face-off in New Rochelle, New York, where two veterans in their early 30s are facing off. One is Patrick (Josh O’Connor), professionally languishing to the point that he can neither afford a night at a scruffy motel near the venue nor so much as a breakfast sandwich. The other is Art (Mike Faist), a one-time wünderkind still famous enough to attract paparazzi attention currently stuck in a confidence-shaking losing streak. Watching intently from the stands is Art’s wife and coach, Tashi (Zendaya), who herself was once a young tennis superstar before a gnarly leg injury took her off the court for good. (Based on Roger Federer’s wife, Mirka, Tashi’s laser focus on her husband’s professional standing unsatisfactorily compensates for the august career she undoubtedly would have had.) The pair has become a sports-world power couple; a luxury-car brand for which they’re co-ambassadors declares them GAME CHANGERS on a billboard erected almost intimidatingly in a prominent part of the town where the match is taking place. (Art’s current hard times, though, recast the billboard as showily empty bluster.)  

Read the full review on 425.