Challengers

 A love triangle in the world of tennis

A picture from the film

“Challengers” is a film by Luca Guadagnino (April 2024).

How beautiful!

Finally, a bit of cinema with a capital C, in which the tools of the seventh art are used to their fullest to tell a story conceived and developed for the big screen.

What makes it beautiful is not only the story itself (which is well-crafted anyway), but the way it is shown to the audience one piece at a time with a series of flashbacks cleverly inserted during the course of a tennis match.
The protagonists of the love triangle reveal, scene after scene, their nature and that of the relationship binding them, through effective dialogues, small details, a soundtrack that is nothing short of perfect and a sensational editing.

And then there are some crazy gems, like towards the end, when the camera’s point of view changes to that of one of the players and then the other, ends up under the court, as if its surface were made of glass, and at a certain point switches to that of the tennis ball.

In short, whether you like tennis or not, I recommend it, but if you love and follow tennis, you can’t miss it.
Even if the film is not about tennis, which is only the context in which the love triangle is narrated, if you know a little about this sport and its protagonists of the present and the past, you won’t miss those elements of reality (facts and people) that have inspired some aspects of the story and, above all, of the characters.

Enjoy!