'Challengers' Is a True Love Triangle
I adored Luca Guadagnino's sexy, stylish sports romance.
When we typically employ the term “love triangle,” we’re playing a little fast and loose with the word “triangle.” We use the term to talk about three people and two of those people love the same person. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it would be more appropriate to call it a “love arrow.” But Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is a true love triangle where all three participants deeply love each other because they provide something that they can’t get completely from just one person. How do you complicate such a throuple beyond societal mores? Set in the world of athletic competition where there are definitive winners and losers. The tension that binds all of Challengers together is about three people desperate to win, and constantly reminded how little actual victory they have in their personal lives because their desires are too multifaceted to be satisfied by a single person.
The story jumps around in time, but our present is a challenger tennis match between star athlete Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), who needs to get his game right if he ever hopes to complete a Grand Slam, and his former friend and doubles partner Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who has been bumming around the circuit, but never reached the fame and success of Art. Between them is Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), Art’s wife and coach who was poised to be a tennis legend in her own right until an injury in college ended her playing career.
Even from the beginning, we can see how these three people have settled into lives of quiet desperation. Art wants Tashi’s love, but has to settle for a marriage bounded by their profession. Patrick wants Art’s success, but has to settle for never being as good as he could be due to his own arrogance and selfishness. Tashi wants to play tennis again, but has to settle for coaching a man she could probably beat if her knee still worked. Moreover, across this triangle, all three of these people want something the other two offer. Tashi wants Art’s emotional support but also craves the sexual excitement she gets from Patrick. Art wants Tashi’s respect, but he also has a deep love for Patrick that Patrick reciprocated in their younger days even though they couldn’t fully express it due to their need to “win” and masculinity defining “winning” as getting the girl. Patrick, in addition to loving Art, also wants Tashi to share her wisdom with him so that he can finally reach the upper echelons of the tennis world he can’t reach on his own.
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