ASSISTS #1 - CHALLENGERS
Debbie Zhou with the ASSIST talking the eroticism of tennis, Challengers, and beautiful sweat.
Welcome to the first edition of Assists1, a series where I invite my friends to talk about a sport/sports movie that they love. I am so excited about this series, and with the amount of invites I’ve been giving out, it’ll probably be a regular occurrence.
My vision with the Assists is to invite film fans and critics who aren’t necessarily “sports” people but love a sports movie, or film fans who are also sports fans to talk about a sport they love, or maybe even sports fans who aren’t necessarily big film people, to talk about sports movies and what it is about them that interests or moves us.
My first guest is Debbie Zhou, a culture critic and producer, as well as fellow MIFF Critics Campus soulmate, Rough Cutter and “beginner tennis player.” When I got my invite to the Challengers screening, I knew I wanted to talk about it with Debbie. Not only because she knows a lot more about tennis than me (the last time I saw her she was in town expressly for the Australian Open) but also because a Luca Guadagnino film about tennis starring Zendaya and an ex-Newsie with Debbie (also a musical fan) was too good an opportunity to pass up.
The Film
Challengers is a relationship drama written by Justin Kuritzkes (Celine Song of Past Lives’ husband) and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) set in the world of professional tennis. Zendaya (as if you don’t already know) stars as Tashi Duncan, a once promising tennis prodigy now sidelined to the role of coach and figurehead of a tennis power couple to her professional tennis champ husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, Newsies OBC, Dear Evan Hansen OBC, West Side Story [2021])2 who is on a losing streak. To regain his confidence, she signs him up to a small-scale Challenger tournament in New Rochelle, New York, in what should be an easy win. That is until his opponent during the final is Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor, La Chimera, Emma., God’s Own Country)3, Art’s former best friend. The film then bisects into two timelines, the Challenger final and 13 years earlier, when the trio first meet. What ensues is a sensual and psychological ménage-à-trois on and off the courts.
While we don’t go into too many specifics, this chat isn’t intended to be spoiler-free. Read at your own discretion.
How Debbie got into tennis
Debbie: I’ve always loved tennis, like I’ve always followed the Australian Open, I would say. But my obsession with tennis came about in... 2022? It definitely coincided with Rafael Nadal coming back and started winning the Australian Open. Ash Barty won that year... it was an amazing Australian Open to watch live. I had followed Nadal [for years], like I watched the 2012 match with him and [Novak] Djokovic on television, but I never really followed other tournaments beyond the Australian Open. But 2022 was such an amazing year for [Nadal] that I followed every single tournament after... I was obsessed with him, and like, for me, I had liked sports people before, but I am obsessed with Nadal! It became a hyper-obsession. I also started playing tennis January 2022, so it coincided with me getting better at playing the sport, getting to know how to play the sport, and following the sport.
Claire: It’s kind of like how you get into movies: You watch a really good movie, and suddenly you want to learn more, and you start getting into movies. You find a tennis player you really like; you learn more about it, and you get really into tennis.
Debbie: Yeah, and I think personality is a big part of it. Because it’s only one person on the court, and it’s very different from other sports in that sense. It’s a very independent sport, it’s not a team sport and you carry that pressure. For me it’s like Nadal encapsulates everything I’m not *laughs* Everything I aspire to be and everything that I’m not. Being able to fight through the worst ups and downs, and the mentality of being able to stay so strong. The mental game is almost just as critical as is physical and that is what really drew me into the sport because it’s so intense, right? It’s a very tense game. I love watching it live because it’s one of the few sports where you need to be quiet. I love it. I love it! I love the ritual of it, even as a viewer. I think I quite like sports that aren’t big and rowdy, I quite like the intensity of watching these two players [on the court] with a ball.
Have you ever thought of tennis as an erotic sport?
Debbie: I don’t really see it as an erotic sport, because like, watching Nadal play, he picks his bum, like he has all these rituals. For me, sport has always been a little bit gross, everyone’s always sweating, it’s just, hot and gross and dirty, and you’re kind of grubby? That’s part of the grind of it. So, for me it’s more about the grind of the sport rather than ... like the film does it in a very different way, where it’s like, you get to see the bodies and the movement, which are very much a part of the film and the characters, and what they are trying to show off to each other. And there’s also a lot of meaning. And I feel like the sweatiness is actually sexy in the film. There is so much sweat, but it’s like beautiful sweat.
Claire: So much sweat! And you got the camera underneath them and it’s dripping off them and it looks like clean water. It’s clean sweat.
Debbie: It was beautiful sweat. It was like, glistening... but yeah, I wouldn’t say I [thought tennis was an erotic sport] but after seeing the film, like, wasn’t there that quote in the film about “life is like tennis” or “relationships are like tennis.”
Claire: [Zendaya’s character] Tashi was saying that tennis is a relationship, or a match is a relationship, basically saying it’s like sex.
Debbie: Sure, and I think to the basics of it, tennis is a very useful metaphor. Honestly, I wouldn’t say the writing of this film was subtle in any way. Under any other direction the script could have just been bad, because it was on the nose at many points. But Luca Guadagnino made it kind of campy and sexy, [with] needle drop moments. He definitely added a melodramatic vibe and the film kind of needed it.
Do you see it as an erotic sport now? Like, what did you think?
Claire: I already saw the potential of it being [erotic] mainly like, first of all, the grunting. Like everyone is silent, and then all you hear is grunting back and forth. And that has always seemed very sexual to me. I know it’s just the force of which they’re hitting, so it’s more a sign of power and exertion rather than that, but still...
Debbie: Yeah, that’s why I don’t really... for me it’s more animalistic, it’s really digging into the deep core of you and putting yourself in that state.
Claire: It takes you over, which in one case is the physical power of the body in the sport and [the grunting] becomes a very good manifestation of that, but on the other hand, it being animalistic and it taking over your body can also be quite sensual or erotic.
I’d also be interested to know though, like, why tennis? Why foreground this story in tennis?
Debbie: I think we don’t get enough tennis dramas. I think tennis is the perfect way to examine relationships. I see it definitely as a power play. It’s such a mental thing, it’s all about the mind games that you play with your opponent as much as your strength and your power, your talent and your grit. It’s almost more mental than physical. That’s the real crux of tennis for me. How can you possibly maintain your fucking cool when shit is happening? How do you rebalance? One-minute things will be going your way and the next minute they are falling down.
But I mean a throuple and a love triangle? Increase the stakes! Why not?
Claire: At the start of the film, you see [Mike Faist’s Art and Josh O’Connor’s Patrick] working so well together in a Double’s team, and then how turned on they get watching Tashi play. And how she gets into it as well and she screams at the end [of her game] is kind of like a signifier for a “climax.” But then Art and Patrick versing each other... There’s this mental closeness, especially if you play doubles with someone versus playing against him in singles. You know someone inside and out in so many ways. And I imagine in tennis you’ll be studying your opponents and how they work and what they’re going to do, and what their moves are like, so it is a mental game. Translating that into relationships, it’s like “How can I one-up this person when we are both going after the same thing?”
Debbie: Yeah, tennis played a part in it, but there were other scenes. Like for example when Art and Patrick were in the sauna and it was just so steamy and so much tension. There are so many things that happen around the court that add to the tennis match [that centres the film].
Claire: Yeah, and the posturing between sets, where they are lounging on their chairs, basically falling out of it because they are so spread out. Art’s taking his shirt off and his sitting there with his muscles out, and Patrick is eating the banana and winking at him. They’re trying to get under each other’s skin, not only with Tashi but also each other. They’re trying to rile each other up with their physical bodies.
Debbie: And Tashi loves that, right? That’s what she gets off on as well.
Claire: Which we see at the end when she screams “C’mon!” which is reminiscent of the first time. Art and Patrick know each other so well, and in an opponent, you know exactly what to do to destroy the other person, essentially. But in that final set of the New Rochelle Challenger in the “present day”, once we the audience knew that Tashi and Patrick had hooked up, all through that final set I was waiting for [Patrick] to do the thing with the racquet! Which harks back to 12 years ago with like, “if you slept with her do this [gesture when you serve].”
Debbie: I have to say that moment was great!
Claire: I loved it, and I have to say I was waiting for it, I was anticipating it, because I knew it would be so good, and then it was. And it’s not like the moment is tennis exclusive, you could set up a narrative device like that in any kind of context, as a non-verbal indicator that harks back to something from the start of the film that makes the audience go “oh, shit!” But the way that he used it in the tennis context, and he used it to throw Art off in the game worked so well. He also knows that Art needs to get out of his head, so he’s going to make him angry. It’s that thing: he played it the exact right time, at the exact right moment. And then Tashi doesn’t know what Patrick is doing, but Art does, and Art yells “Fuck off!” and then it’s the most intense, cohesive, powerful tennis match which is full of tension. They’re basically fucking at that point, but it’s on the court.
Debbie: Yeah, I love that moment. I was sitting next to Claire Cao [our mutual, amazing friend] and she gasped. Before he even moved to put the ball on the racquet, she gasped.
Claire: It was crazy because we we’re all so hooked! We all knew it was going to happen, but we were also waiting for it and once it did happen it was perfect. But I love how in filmmaking you can introduce something to the audience at the start, and then time passes and you maybe forget out it, until it comes back and it is because the meaning had been made, and the connection had been made—
Debbie: And the meaning has changed as well, right? You almost forget about it, but it’s like they have a secret language between the two of them.
Claire: It’s also been like 12 years since it happened, but they remember it as well.
Debbie: And there is still a resentment between the two of them. When it first happened there was a slight resentment already there. I found the dynamic between Art and Patrick really interesting. Do you remember when Art was trying to undermine [Patrick and Tashi’s] relationship and trying to break them up, and Patrick is like “I know what you’re doing, and I love that of you.”
Claire: Patrick wants him to fight him for it.
Debbie: I think the three of them thrive off the competition with each other. They love that and that’s why at the end what actually gets Tashi to scream is the fact that they are both at that point where Art is fighting for something again. What turns Tashi on are people that fight for the sport and fight for her. That’s what gets her off.
Claire: What does get her off and what attracts her is passion in the sport. It is Tennis. The way they were setting their connection up, is that they wouldn’t work if they weren’t tennis players, and if they all weren’t some level of skill and talent. And Tashi could use tennis to turn her on herself, but because she can’t do that anymore [because of her injury] she has to rely on it from other people.
Claire: Also yelling “C’mon!” is just such a tennis thing as well.
Debbie: I thought the racquet smashing was a bit dramatic.
Claire: How many racquets do they have?!
Debbie: Yeah like, it happens but it doesn’t happen that often. It’s not like after every point [during a tennis match] someone’s smashing a racquet. Calm down!
Claire: They just got to exert all these feelings and tension...
Debbie: For the drama, yeah, “FOR THE DRAMA”. And the physical power of showing how pissed off someone is. But not even Nick Kyrgios smashes that many racquets.
[Cue Debbie’s rant about her hatred for Nick Kyrgios, in which the conversation promptly derailed]4
Really testing my knowledge of sports terminology with this newsletter.
OBC means Original Broadway Cast. Yes, I’m including Broadway roles because it’s my newsletter and I can do what I want.
I am doing a hand heart as I write this.
If you are interested to read more about Debbie’s Kyrgios rant, please let me know, I’m already thinking about bonus content haha.