On the podcast episode, we discuss Luca Guadagnino’s new film Challengers (2024), which stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Seventh Row favourite Josh O’Connor as competitive tennis players and romantic rivals.
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In this episode, we discuss Luca Guadagnino’s new film Challengers (2024), which stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Seventh Row favourite Josh O’Connor as competitive tennis players and romantic rivals.
Film critic and Katherine Hepburn obsessive Andrew Kendall joins host Alex Heeney for the episode. We are both Josh O’Connor super-fans and liked the film. But we had a lot of issues with it. We discuss why we can’t stop thinking about it and where it disappoints.
An AI-generated transcript for the episode is available at the bottom of this post.
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About the film Challengers
Luca Guadagnino’s film Challengers is written by Justin Kuritzkes (husband of Past Lives writer-director Celine Song) and charts the relationship dynamics between a trio of tennis players across 13 years, but told non-linearly. When teenage best friends Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) meet rising tennis star Tashi (Zendaya), they’re instantly smitten. An evening spent together, which might turn into a threesome, establishes the push and pull dynamics between the trio, which will dominate their lives for over a decade.
When we pick up in the present day, Art and Patrick face each other in a tennis match for the first time since they were kids. Art is a tennis star married to Tashi, his coach, who had to give up her tennis career after a knee injury. Patrick has lost touch with both and is still playing tennis but has failed to reach his potential.
The film opens with the tennis match between Art and Patrick, and we flash back repeatedly to fill in the gaps of what turned these former besties into major rivals and why this tennis match matters to the trio.
On the podcast about Challengers, we discuss why we can’t stop thinking about the film, Josh O’Connor’s brilliant performance, Luca Guadagnino’s strong direction, and how Kuritzkes’s script provokes us and lets us down.
Seventh Row’s books on Luca Guadagnino x Josh O’Connor
Get your copy of Alex’s book on Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name.
Get your copy of Alex’s book on Francis Lee’s film God’s Own Country, which stars Josh O’Connor in his breakout role.
Buy both books with our 35% discounted bundle here.
On the podcast about Luca Guadagnino’s film Challengers
- 0:00 Intro to Challengers and why we’re talking about the film (Josh O’Connor and Luca Guadagnino)
- 6:04 Why can’t we stop thinking about the film even though we had issues with it? What’s all the fuss about?
- 13:40 Tennis serves as an extended metaphor and a structure of the film and informs the film’s grammar
- 26:15 Missing scenes and character development
- 56:49 The film fails to recognize momentous occasions and how this relates to the way the film was shot
- 1:00:00 How Luca Guadagnino’s direction rescues weaknesses in the script and performances
- 1:20:00 Will Challengers still matter by the end of the year or years from now?
- 1:23:00 Where you can find us, related episodes, coming soon on the podcast
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