In Challengers (2024, Luca Guadagnino), through the language of cinema (which is always to say, subtext), the evolving balance of prominence between gay and straight sexual relationships in modern mainstream movies is depicted through tennis. Though its point on its timeline constantly bounces back and forth, the story is an obviously gay guy is married to TASHI DONALDSON (Zendaya), and the guy we all know he really belongs with is his opponent in a tennis match.
Before I saw Challengers I thought if a mainstream Hollywood movie was subversive that it also had to be provocative. But in a very confident way, Challengers doesn’t so much try to do a gay version of a romantic relationship drama as much as it allows its gay relationship to freely exist as one of the key dramatic components of the film alongside a straight relationship, while even adding in the classic romantic genre tropes career v family v friendship v sexual attraction v power dynamic v what works for you and all that. At first you find tennis is about fucking; then that tennis is also about relationships; and the best part is that the tennis is both. And just as in real life, sex and relationships are only individually learned through experience. When Tashi says “I don’t want to be a homewrecker,” it doesn’t stop her from going after each of the 2 gay men for her own different reasons; and she learns as she goes. In Challengers Tashi not wanting to be a homewrecker really means not wanting to have to hinder the gay relationship—because ultimately she (and the film) don’t. Because in the movie world of make believe she can not want to spoil what she knows the 2 men have, then spoil it, and still not spoil it, because when people get a happy ending in a Hollywood movie they don’t need answers. This movie isn't provocative, it's elevated. It's not about thinking about lifestyles or politics because it proves in cinema, form is about where you can take the story and its characters as a means of providing an intelligently well crafted entertainment. And it's good when a movie lets you decide and figure out things for yourself, but even far less seldom achieved and way better is when it understands the form of cinema so well it never bothers to try to deal with any.
Zendaya’s character is present as an object of sexual desire. From the first shot of her entering the court with her lithe body and wind blowing up her skirt as she flaunts her rear end in an obvious nod to 50s mainstream Hollywood’s Marilyn Monroe Seven Year Itch campaign, to her luxury underwear, and athletic outfits flattering her thigh gap, Challengers depicts both homosexual and heterosexual attraction. (Because we know Hollywood would love to have a mainstream crossover box office hit. And you obviously don’t have to be a guy or hetero to think Zendaya is hot.)
The point isn’t to try to wonder about the logic in how it can realistically do both, because cinema isn’t about reality; and in this case points to the similarity of the two and defies the burden of having to stick to only one or the other. It’s like a well crafted joint fitting. Because this isn’t just a bi movie where all three hookup to like say poly is the easy solution. And even though I just said cinema isn’t about reality, here it succeeds in ultimately communicating a very real truth: in life there are some who go after things they want so bad they are competitors, and when they get serious about it, it becomes their whole life and they don’t stop until they do everything they can not only to get it, but to obsess, and study the ways the game is played and even every aspect of what it is to play. It gets to be metaphysics really. Notice how often characters ask "is this still about tennis?" And once you get to that level is it still a game? Hint: long ago Renoir precisely answered this for us when he told us la règle du jeu.
But another thing that’s so great about Challengers is how it's so easy to follow in a way that’s always very fun and sexy. Although as satisfying as it all is, my only sneaking reservation is that when Luca Guadagnino gets to the point of too much like Snyder cut levels of slow motion in the tennis matches that he might be tongue in cheek parodying the mainstream Hollywood style to a degree that's no longer genuinely enjoyable. But the synthy Reznor-Ross electropop thumping is more delightfully hypin as anything they’ve done since The Social Network. Okay so final random thought, without analyzing it too much or anything, I’m still thinking about how if Tashi is considered either as the woman or female character or the straight relationship signifier, does it mean anything that she gets injured so early in her career and can no longer compete on the court? Oh and my answer is yes this is absolutely a mainstream Hollywood movie and the evidence I'm basing this final assertion on: all the product placement.
04/26/2024
AMC Phipps Plaza 14
DCP
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