Luca Guadagnino's New Movie: Intense Rivalries in the World of Competitive Tennis

Unique Points

• Tashi engineers a three-way kiss before leaving the hotel room.
• Zendaya's portrayal of an alpha-female tennis girlboss in Challengers may spark lesbian awakenings.

Accuracy

• Patrick and Art represent conflicting factions of Tashi’s innermost desires in Challengers.
• The movie explores the complex bond among Tashi, Art, and Patrick that passes through tennis rather than physical intimacy.

Deception (30%)

• It is the hottest scene of the hottest film of the year... Near the start of Challengers, teenage tennis sensation Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) finds herself in the dingy hotel room shared by two of her male contemporaries: Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist). The hormone-fueled besties have just followed Tashi around a party, where they ogled at her in her intensely 2010-coded royal-blue dress... Now, they’re all drinking beer from cans on the hotel room floor. Both boys eventually ask for Tashi’s number.
• In Challengers, tennis is a metaphor for the most basic human urge: desire... As directed by Luca Guadagnino, it’s a hot, sweaty spectacle… One that confirms the Sexy Tennis Movie as a definitive canon. Tennis and sex make the perfect match… The very act of flirting can feel like a metaphorical game of tennis.
• Speaking of which, Challengers feels remarkably queer for a film about a heterosexual love triangle... The main three characters of the new film are partially naked for a lot of it... Guadagnino leaves the specifics of their history together (and their true feelings about each other) open to interpretation. Then there is Zendaya, whose portrayal of an alpha-female tennis girlboss seems destined to spark a million lesbian awakenings.

Fallacies (85%)

• ]It's a hot, sweaty spectacle[
• Tennis is a metaphor for the most basic human urge: desire.
• Sitting on the beach, a sirenlike Tashi tells an arrogant Patrick that he 'doesn’t know' what tennis really is, before concluding: 'It’s a relationship.'

Bias (95%)

• Challengers is a hot, sweaty spectacle–one that confirms the Sexy Tennis Movie as a definitive canon.
• If Wimbledon is like a warm hug, then Woody Allen’s Match Point is less so.
• Sitting on the beach, a sirenlike Tashi tells an arrogant Patrick that he ‘doesn’t know’ what tennis really is, before concluding: It’s a relationship.
• Tennis and sex make the perfect match–the very act of flirting can feel like a metaphorical game of tennis.
• The story of one of tennis’s greatest queer champions is told in 2017’s Battle of the Sexes.
• Whether it’s a movie about tennis or civil war, it’s my strong belief that any film is improved with the presence of Kirsten Dunst.

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

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Author Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

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Unique Points

• Zendaya plays the lead role in Luca Guadagnino’s new tennis movie, ‘Challengers’.
• Tashi now serves as both coach and manager for her husband Art Donaldson.
• The central narrative of the movie revolves around a high-stakes tennis match between Tashi, Art, and Patrick.

Accuracy

• Zendaya plays the lead role in Luca Guadagnino’s new tennis movie, ‘Challengers.’
• The movie follows Zendaya’s character, Tashi Duncan, who is a former tennis prodigy forced into retirement due to an injury.
• Tashi now serves as both coach and manager for her husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), a struggling star player.
• Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), Art’s estranged best friend, is also a talented but undisciplined tennis player.

Deception (80%)

• The tennis match that begins, ends, and provides the central narrative framework for Challengers... strikes the viewer as implausibly high-stakes for a match at a shabby New Rochelle, New York, tournament called the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger.
• ,

Fallacies (95%)

• ]The tennis match that begins, ends, and provides the central narrative framework for Challengers... strikes the viewer as implausibly high-stakes[
• In Patrick's words, Tashi is 'the hottest woman alive'
• Thanks to ingenious costuming and styling, these three excellent actors carry off the trick of seeming to age from recent high school graduates to adults in their early 30s

Bias (95%)

• The tennis match that begins, ends, and provides the central narrative framework for Challengers...strikes the viewer as implausibly high-stakes for a match at a shabby New Rochelle, New York, tournament called the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger.
• Two fiercely competitive male players...slam the ball back and forth as if vying for world-champion status.
• When we first meet them, Tashi and Art are a world-famous power couple...Meanwhile, Patrick is so down on his luck he has to sleep in his car in the tournament parking lot and sweet-talk the lady who signs him in to share half of her breakfast bagel.

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Author Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Unique Points

• Luca Guadagnino's movie ‘Challengers’ is about tennis players Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig.
• Art is a tennis champ in a slump, disciplined by his wife and coach Tashi Duncan.
• Patrick is dieting because he’s broke and looks hungry when he eats.
• They are preparing to face each other in a Challenger tournament with high emotional stakes.
• Thirteen years ago, Art and Patrick were best friends and doubles partners. Tashi was a tennis prodigy who married Art.
• Tashi’s career-ending injury spurs her second act with Art. She becomes his coach and is determined to help him succeed.

Accuracy

• The movie explores their past, including their failed attempts at threesomes and Tashi’s seduction of both men.
• Tashi becomes his coach and is determined to help him succeed.

Deception (30%)

• He lives to serve, and he wants the game to go on forever.
• The movie makes little distinction between sex scenes and non-sex scenes.
• , The camera keeps finding Tashi’s gaze, fixed straight ahead. She alone sees past the individual strokes, and the over-all score, to perceive the deeper psychological game her boys are playing.
• Art is disciplined to a fault, and his regimen hints at a joyless caution that, in the eyes of a cinematic voluptuary like Guadagnino, already seems like defeat.

Fallacies (85%)

• a cinematic voluptuary like Guadagnino
• a funny, tempestuous, and exuberantly lusty story about how three athletic demigods see their destinies upended.

Bias (95%)

• deeper psychological game
• exulting in the glory of bared chests and sweat-matted leg hair
• pitiably hungry
• rakishly handsome

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Author Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication