If for Forrest Gump life was like a box of chocolates, for Luca Guadagnino he desire It’s a tennis match. There are good and bad serves, ‘match points’, ‘tie-breaks’ and a whole range of terminology that can be used both for the sport as for him sex.
It is more or less what his latest film proposes, Rivals (‘Challengers’) in which he uses the prototypical love triangle to put it at the service of a film in which what matters are, basically, the balls (both in the strict and metaphorical sense).
It may interest you: Who are the two actors who will compete for Zendaya’s love in her next film
Rivals It begins with a matchup in a tournament. On one side, a racket idol in low hours Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and, on the other, a player who has gone bad, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). In the middle is Tashi (Zendaya), former youth legend who, after an injury, became an elite coach.
From that moment on, we will embark on a great ‘flash-back’ which will basically consist of discovering if those two opponents They are playing tennis or… something else, as if it were a cockfight.
Luca Guadagnino has always been an extremely sensitive director when it comes to highlighting the itching of the bodyor what is the same, the spark, the attraction and the sexual appetite. He’s been doing it since his first movie, Melissa P. (starring the Spanish Maria Valverde) and, little by little, it became stylized into the delirious as well as absorbing Io Sonno L’Amorewith Tilda Swinton or in blinded by the sunalthough his most famous work continues to be Call Me By Your Namethe film that discovered the potential of Timothée Chalamet as a Gen-Z icon.
In fact, all his films talk about the same thing. Of the senses, of the seduction, of physical impulses. Of the sex, Oh. The wonderful thing about Guadagnino is that he is capable of Modify his style according to the narrative that is in your hands and transform it into something different through cinematographic resources.
It may interest you: The director of ‘Dune’ is right: why Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Austin Butler and Florence Pugh will be the new stars of Hollywood
Guadagnino likes it play and with Rivals He has come to do precisely that. That’s why the movie becomes an authentic experience. frisky in which the basic codes of comedies are used battle of sexes to transform them into a sports drama that acquires the most lubricious in which the success on the court with him can in the bed.
This is how the relationship between Tashi, Art and Patrick will be from the beginning, although, as in any good ‘screwball comedy’ (although this is not in the strict sense), it will be the woman the one who wears the reins while the men are left alone to fight duel through a pathetic swagger on the court.
He signs the script Justin Kuritkes (the couple of Celine Songthe great revelation of last year thanks to Past Lives) in which the weakness male acquires epic overtones, while the director is in charge of heat to the staff through a device of the most lustful in which every word and every camera movement (with unexpected techno music, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) has a specific intention as flirtation febrile and, why not say it, a little ‘filthy’ (without seeing anything beyond… virile members and butts, which is no small thing and they eat churros and plantains all the time).
It had been a long time since a ‘blockbuster’ (by the author, of course) was not shown in such an ‘unprejudiced’ way and also so free. Because what Guadagnino does with this material, in addition to increase the temperatureit’s a exercise of style impeccable when it comes to to experience without fear with all resources formal that is within your reach, with a few flashes of genius only suitable for those who dare to risk and challenge without impostureonly through a entertainment accomplice.
In that sense, the scenes of that match with which the film begins and which have their climax In the final section, they result from a dare constant, playfulas exquisite and elegant as finally mess. A real delight.
