Challengers is a killer love triangle romance that hates love

There's something to be said about the movies on our marquees lately.

A presciently pessimistic war drama is spurring on conversation on the future of American democracy. A psychedelic, worm-heavy space opera is topping the box office. A black comedy on lesbian bodybuilders is solidly outperforming expectations.

And despite hardly being about sports or love at all, topsy-turvy tennis mnage trois Challengers is already hotly anticipated so much that if CBC added its similarly named1991 filmThe Challengersto Gem, it could probably make up its entire deficit from confused new subscribershoping to spot Zendaya.

That's not to saymainstream movie-going is perfect, but it's hard not to feel optimistic walking out of the Zendaya-led and -produced feature.

Because even in spite of occasional messy plotting and line delivery so stilted it must be camp Challengers does pretty much exactly what it says it will on the tin.

It's a slow-building marvel that challenges everyone: its characters, on how far they'll go for the film's central theme;its writer, on the division between reality and fiction;and its viewers, on what they personally define as admirableand, conversely,as villainous.

That's a lot to ask for a story that essentially begins withteenagers looking to grab a beer at a party. But Challengers has a lot more going on beneath the surface.

Unpacking starts with looking at its three pro-tennis leads. First, there's Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), a human doormat stuck in an athletic slump, and so figuratively retiringyou start to wish he'd do it literally,instead.

There's his boarding school bedfellow and supposed best friend Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor), arugged natural superstar who seems immune to every obstacle except his unrelenting self-confidence.

Then there's Zendaya's Tashi Duncan. A true self-possessed force of nature,Tashi is the paragon of power and control, in a drama that looks to find out why we need those both so much.

That's true on and off the court here. Westart at the end, in an ostensibly low-stakes match between mid-30s Patrick and Art with Tashiwatching in the stands and spend the rest of the film figuring out how we got there.

Though we meetTashias Art's wife and coach, Patrick as a meandering bum sleeping in his car outside of tournaments and Art as a celebrity on a losing streak, there's a history.

In a stylishly disjointed style, we jump around to see the come-up of all three, the plotting and feints in their playing as well as in their ways of winning their partner.

And most prophetically, there's Tashi'sbelief that tennis and specificallywinning is not a sport;"it's a relationship."

It's thisslickly cynical interpretation of affection that guides the action.And as the three swirl in and out ofdysfunctional and cutthroat relationships with one another almost entirely based on ulterior motives the line between love and competition gets impossibly blurry.

Head to headto head

Challengers is not really about tennis, and is only interested in its love triangle as far as it can be used to show the two are the same thing.

While love triangles in cinema are about as common as fuzzy headbands in tennis, Challengers moves its players into more rarefied territory. Instead of centring one character's perspective, all three get equal footing and audience sympathy.

There's obvious allegiance owed to Jules and Jim,the 1962 film about two friends in love with the same woman.

But the workings under the hoodcloser reflect more recent throuple dramas.Like the genre-defining Y Tu Mam Tambin about a pair of oversexed adolescents on an impromptu road trip alongside an older woman with poor decision-making skills Challengers is about control.

Surface comparisons make this clear. In both, the female character subtly andgleefully prods the two young men into a physical relationship with each other.

Y Tu Mam'sprotagonist angrily laments, "You get babies to look after, and you end up changing their diapers!" In Challengers, the same dynamic between the three is cemented by Zendaya'salready iconic line:"I'm taking such good care of my little white boys."

But what's most compelling aboutChallengersis how it works like a dark version of the 2001 film.

Y Tu Mam's cast squabbles, before drifting into a quiet finaleabout accepting life for what it is.The message ofChallengers is the opposite. The threeuse relationship and sport to use and belittle each another so often that the concept of love gets abstracted to its absolute basest form:who's in control, who's leading and in the end,whowins?

Is it Art, for being more interested in comfort than competing? Is it the woolgathering Patrick, for refusing to giveup on his dreams already? (AndignoringTashi'sjoyfully ridiculous line, "You're 31, you have a better shot with a handgun in your mouth"?)

Or is it Tashi, who manipulates and lies for the sake of winning something she values aboveallelse?

Your choices for hero, villain and victim among the three maybe completely different from those of the person sitting next to you.

The assertive female character as the villain

That said, intentionally or not, films do tend to position assertive female characters as villains simply for upending an expected power dynamic.

But those films usually include an explanation as to why. From Atonement's youthfully innocent and high-classBriony,to The Reader'sandKung Fu Master's older women corrupting their much younger loves, there's alwaysa comforting reason inserted to explain or excusethe shift in power.

Then there's love triangle romance Past Lives, written by Celine Song wife to Challengers writer Justin Kuritzkes. In a potentially reality-and-fiction-clouding line, the protagonist's husbandgives his own take on why that film's woman is in the wrong: "If this was a story someone was telling, I'd be the evil white American husband keeping you two apart."

But Kuritzkes's Challengers doesn't serve that argument.In her first starring featurerole, Zendaya shines as a deeply complex, and conflicted, Svengali.

A similar age to her partners, in the same relative stage of her career and the only non-white character of the bunch, Tashi does not have an ancillary trait to explain how she could dare manage to get one over on the boys.

As the truly athletically gifted one among them and as both coach and manipulator of the other two she dares us to see her as the villain. And she might just succeed.

But with so manyother,and vastly more interesting,readings available,Challengers'sbiggest achievement is how its audience itself is challengedto choose one interpretation and examine what about themselves made them chooseit.