Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 8 October

Challengers (Guadagnino, 2024)

The world moves fast and films arrive to instantly become part of the con­ver­sa­tion and then dis­ap­pear from our con­scious­ness just as quickly.

Challengers is one of these. It spawned hun­dreds of memes back in April and now it’s yesterday’s news.

But def­in­itely still worth a look.

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is a thor­oughly enter­tain­ing romp set in the world of pro­fes­sion­al tennis.

Zendaya, prov­ing that she is a movie star of the first rank, plays a former prodigy who has to retire through injury before she even gets to turn pro. When we meet her she is wife and coach of a cham­pi­on whose career is going down­hill (Mike Faist from West Side Story). In an attempt to get some easy wins under his comeback belt, they head to a tiny tour­na­ment where he has to face off against his former doubles part­ner – and her former boy­friend – Josh O’Connor. He, too, needs to win this tour­na­ment before his fad­ing career expires.

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This menage is told with some furi­ous inter­cut­ting between timelines, usu­ally explained with cap­tions but also by keep­ing track of hairstyles.

The film is sur­pris­ingly astute about the inter­sec­tion of ambi­tion, tal­ent and lust and wheth­er there’s a com­bin­a­tion of the three that can ever add up to love.

Also in that April news­let­ter: Ava DuVernay’s power­ful Origin, com­ic hor­ror Abigail and the doc­u­ment­ary about Noël Coward, Mad About the Boy.

Where to watch Challengers

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland & UK: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, MGM+ and Fubo