Challengers 4K 2024 2160p WEB-DL

The action of “The Contenders” revolves around a once famous tennis player (Mike Feist) who is depressed. In the hope of somehow improving the situation, his wife (Zendeia) and coach enrolls him as a participant in a Challenger tournament, where his opponent is his wife's former lover (Josh O'Connor).

Challengers 4K Review
Art Donaldson (Mike Feist) has stalled on a losing streak. His whole life is professional tennis, but he's always lacked the smallest step to move into the big leagues of the sky-high. Now, with the greatness of Nadal and Federer particularly pressing, Donaldson is beginning to be haunted by defeats. The inexplicable series of failures should be interrupted by the Challenger tournament in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York, where Donaldson is the undisputed favorite. But Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor), once Art's best friend and now an unpromising man in his 30s, for whom New Rochelle is the only possible source of income and the last chance to qualify for the Grand Slam. Patrick and Art look like David and Goliath and the outcome of the battle seems to be a foregone conclusion, but when the woman they both love - Art's wife Tashi (Zendea) - watches from the stands, things become unpredictable.

From the very first minutes, there's a sense of subterfuge and mockery in “The Contenders.” But if Gregg Araki in “The Doom Generation” tittered “Gregg Araki's first heterosexual movie” and turned everything into a carnival, Luca Guadagnino, perhaps due to a lack of desire, or maybe even opportunity, acts without frontal cues. However, given that the promotional campaign of the picture was based on rhyming sex and sports, which directly in the film is given minimal attention, it is probably a conscious decision and everything we knew about “The Contenders” before the premiere is not optional, but an obligatory part of the program.

And while the first benchmark can be set by the hooliganism of Gregg Araki, the second is the poeticism of Wong Kar-Wai. Guadagnino has managed to capture the matter of cinema - the right rhythm, the right angles, to set up all the necessary chemistry between the actors. At first it seems strange that boys and girls with the faces of high school students play thirty-year-old athletes beaten by life, but the deeper immersion in the picture, the more willingly you want to believe them. And it doesn't matter at all what they do - what matters is how they look at each other.

As for the rhythm, the jumps in timing - from the current time to 13 years ago, and then another week, and then back to the current time and three years ago, and then forward - seem to confuse the viewer, but the more surprising is that the narrative remains crystal clear. “The Contenders” contains everything that could theoretically disgust: not the most expressive sport as a pivot, the sly concealment of all the other favorite pivots of the author, a love triangle so classic that it may induce yawns when reading the first lines of the description - and it all works to the advantage. Not cliché but classic, not default but intrigue, and so on.

The spirit of “The Contenders” lies in the never-ending competition between each of the three heroes and the other two. In this fight, sport is somewhere on the tenth plan, love and friendship are a little closer and more important, but also not on the first roles. In the first place - competition for the sake of competition, proving their own superiority to the two closest people as a way of life. And that's why Tashi, Art and Patrick are interesting to watch regardless of whether they are having lunch in a café or throwing a ball over a net.

The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deserves a special mention. It seemed that the rockers, who were mired in ambient crafts (“Empire of Light” by Sam Mendes, “The Killer” by David Fincher, “All and All” by Guadagnino - if anyone remembers these movies, it's obviously not because of the soundtracks) write new and new accompanying melodies on automatic, but they managed to surprise. Every now and then, the tracks that break into techno don't just support the mood, but as if they drive both the audience and the heroes further, further and further, to the climax and release.

In “The Contenders” strange “sexy-sports” positioning, the tape falls out of the prepared niches - the picture did not get to the major festivals (in the conditions of strikes left from the opening film in Venice) and, most likely, in the upcoming Oscar season will be somewhere on the sidelines of the American celebration of life. The tense drama about outsiders who first helped their camaraderie to the top, never made it to the top, and then started pitting each other against each other, is marketed by marketers as a dubious Italian TV soap. It has its charm, but the deserved recognition as “the best film of 2024” the picture will have to wait for a very long time.

The author, Luca Guadagnino, is in a similar position: one of the best Italian directors right now, he is completely out of place in Italian cinema. The first 15 years of his career, before the success of The Big Splash, consist of pictures familiar only to ardent cinephiles. With all the popularity of Guadagnino's latest films (“Call Me By Your Name”, “Suspiria”), when talking about them, the author is mentioned only second or third. Perhaps this can be called a phenomenon, but the reasons and peculiarities will be understood only after the director's career is over, which, fortunately, is not even close to a tie-break.