Challengers (2024)
April 25th, 2024
You’d think that prior to making a movie about tennis one would learn how to shoot a game of tennis.
Right out the gate it became extremely clear Guadagnino had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and it unfortunately only went downhill from there. I was in a sort of awe at first, almost impressed by how meticulously and uniquely awful every composition was, each cut multiple frames off, the camera always placed in the exact wrong place. And it just didn’t stop. Challengers seems so much like a debut to me—Guadagnino is trying something completely different in every scene, like he’s searching for a style he can latch on to so he can finally take a break and hit autopilot.
There are a few rare moments early on where the screenplay does the heavy lifting and these moments end up almost enjoyable as a result. Guadagnino’s blundering direction became a very unfortunate baseline after an hour or so, and I had to completely ignore pretty much everything but the dialogue to be able to enjoy myself. Even still, a few major moments stuck out. A particularly disgraceful low frame rate sequence in the final 10 minutes that had all three of us baffled, and the entire final match was entirely incomprehensible. The insane three-way digitally superimposed split diopter bit elicited a very loud and very involuntary laugh from me. Going back to check now, I cannot believe that the last stretch of the final match at the very end of the film wasn’t 20 minutes. Guadagnino just lingers for what feels like hours on these pointless slow motion shots of all three leads, holding back for as long as he possibly can the absolutely senseless ending to what could have possibly been at the very least an intriguing story. None of this is even to mention all of the disgusting subjective camera moments, I honestly don’t have the words to describe how viscerally upsetting they all were.
From the endless computer generated tennis balls—a constant distraction—to the shocking number of fully out of focus shots, there’s nothing at all setting Challengers apart from nearly anything else you could catch at an AMC right now—except maybe its unique incompetency.
Edit: I fully forgot about the soundtrack. Coming in seemingly at random and exiting just the same, it ruined multiple scenes that could have otherwise stood out. Moments that could have easily been highlights, most notably the sauna scene, were completely broken up by the overloud droning of the score for no discernible reason.
Carter Haskins 