Luca Guadagnino is a man of diverse charms. When he dazzled us with ‘Blinded by the Sun’ (2015) and the successful ‘Call Me by Your Name’ (2017), we believed we were facing a new essential figure of Italian organic narrative and, however, his efforts when it came to recreating the unnecessarily convoluted ‘Suspiria’ (2018), or posing as the class outcast in ‘Bones and All’ (2022), left us somewhat confused. Perhaps those two far-fetched formulas were nothing more than training to once again face the sun and sweat as only a trio of tennis players can sweat.
‘Rivals’ is once again a sexy, heated film that is as artificially natural as the soap opera we needed in this story.that of two friends hopelessly in love with the same woman, a Zendaya who doesn’t just know a simple trophy, it’s that she decides to set up the championship and establish the rules so that everything is played according to her plans, even when something seems to go out of control. rules. The actress, who also produces the film, parades before Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, the public and Guadagnino himself as if she were (which she could be if she feels like it) the undisputed number 1 of the ATP. Only the filmmaker’s repetitions (and some unnecessary tricks from Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s photography) are capable of distorting the delicious tackyness that had already been sentenced by Justin Kuritzkes’ script and the essential soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
For sports lovers of three participants
The best: Zendaya, absolute captain of what happens on and off the court.
Worst: some underlining from Guadagnino that the referee didn’t know how to whistle.
Data sheet
Address: Luca Guadagnino Distribution: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, Heidi Garza Country: USA Year: 2024 Release date: 4-26-2024 Gender: Drama Script: Justin Kuritzkes Duration: 131 min.
Synopsis: Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, is married to a champion on a losing streak. Tashi’s strategy to redeem her husband takes a surprising turn when he must confront Patrick, her former best friend and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend. As her pasts and presents collide, and tensions rise, Tashi must ask herself how much it will cost her to win.
Ricardo Rosado is a film critic, cultural journalist, expert in North American comedy, horror films of any kind and everything that happens between genres and formats. Raised on Steven Spielberg films, and spoiled since he encountered David Lynch, he has been writing for a decade about the art he consumes.
In FOTOGRAMAS you will read him commenting on the latest theatrical releases, promoting peace between Marvel and DC fans, reviewing all the Star Wars news or diving into the depths of the Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video and Filmin catalogues. He also likes to make galleries and rankings of movies and series, but no one trusts his judgment too much.
After studying Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid, he created a film review blog with the hope of attending film festivals and press screenings for free. Now, after seven years writing in FOTOGRAMAS about the latest theatrical releases, current series and any content available on the different streaming channels, she still thinks it was worth it.
Frontman of two embarrassing musical projects, director of various video clips by heavy metal bands from Madrid and author of many short films hidden in the Internet, he is the editor and one of the proud members of the cultural podcast ‘Los de al lado de Pumares’ , a space that has allowed him to participate as a collaborator in other radio formats such as ‘Vamos de cine’ (Castilla-La Mancha Media) and ‘El Faro’ (Cadena SER), in addition to having made him one of the main voices of the videos of FRAMES.
