Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Challengers” is quick, deft, and passionate in its every serve, and I like that a lot. Electrifyingly and humorously bouncing along one very complicated situation among its three main characters, the movie alternatively amuses and thrills us to the end, and you will appreciate its masterful handling of story and characters more after getting totally knocked down by its intense and breathtaking finale.

After the opening scene where it skillfully sets its overall tone, the movie quickly establishes how things have not been going that well for Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and his wife Tashi (Zendaya). Although he has been quite a prominent professional tennis player in US for last several years, Art may have to consider retirement seriously due to a series of rather dissatisfying tournament results at present, but he is willing to try more with the full support and encouragement from his wife, who was incidentally a very promising young tennis player before she had to retire due to an unfortunate accident. After her retirement, she began to pursue the career of a tennis coach, and, not so surprisingly, she has been her husband’s coach since their marriage.

After some consideration, Tashi decides to have her husband participate as a wild card player in a Challenger event in New Rochelle, New York, and she hopes that this may boost her husband’s confident to some degree, but, alas, there comes an unexpected problem via Art’s old friend/colleague Partick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). While he is struggling at the bottom of his professional career in addition to being on the verge of becoming literally penniless, Patrick thinks this Challenger event can bring some change to his professional career, and he becomes more confident when it later turns out that he may actually get back in his element at last.

The movie already shows us that Patrick and Art will eventually confront each other during the final game, but the screenplay by Justic Kuritzkes gradually doles out one surprise after another as frequently going back to the interconnected past of its three main characters. In case of a flashback part which goes back to 13 years ago, we see more of how much Art and Patrick stuck to each other as two close friends, and we also observe how zealous Tashi was in preparing for her professional career in the future. When she happens to come across Art and Patrick at one point, she seems to regard them as a tempting challenge to handle instead of being actually attracted to either of them, so she willingly comes to a hotel room where they have been staying.

What happens next among them is both funny and intense in unexpected ways. I will not go into details here, but let’s say that both Patrick and Art get what they want while, to Tashi’s little naughty amusement, also coming to face what has been below their very close friendship. At first, it seems that what happened among them will just stay in the room where that happens, but this inevitably affects everyone in one way or another in addition to putting more strain on Art and Patrick’s supposedly strong relationship.

As we get to know more and more about the very complicated history among these three main characters, we keep wondering more about their real feelings and motives. While Patrick and Art turn out to be struggling with their old mutual emotional issues as before, Tashi also feels less confident than before as becoming rather unbalanced about her feelings about Art and Patrick. Although her self-interest seems to come first for her, she also looks like really caring about her husband while not entirely denying whatever she actually feels about Patrick.

As these three main characters virtually throw or return a serve to each other along the story, Guadagnino and his crew members dials up the level of tension across the screen whenever it looks necessary to them. A number of tennis match scenes in the film are often visually impressive in addition to being increasingly taut and sweaty as demanded, and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has been mainly known for his frequent collaborations with Apichatpong Weerasethakul and also previously worked with Guadagnino in “Suspiria” (2018), and editor Marco Coast deserve to be praised for their top-notch efforts on the screen, which is further accentuated by the propulsive electronic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

The movie surely swings up and down with the absorbingly dynamic interactions among its three main cast members. While Zendaya demonstrates more of her natural talent and charisma than whatever she achieved in Denis Villeneuve’s recent Dune movies, Mike Feist and Jack O’Connor are also equally stellar as their characters constantly push and pull each other throughout the story, and they and Zendaya steadily support their movie even when it stumbles a bit during the last act where every card held behind its back is unfolded for delivering the expected climax as required.

In conclusion, “Challengers” is a well-made sports drama film besides being another knockout work from Guadagnino, who has seldom disappointed me since “I Am Love” (2009). As shown from many of his previous films including “I Am Love” and “Call Me by Your Name” (2017), he is a master filmmaker who really knows how to illustrate human passion and sensuality on the screen, and he definitely proves his main strength again here in this superbly entertaining work.