“I discovered something very violent in the self-control of tennis,” our cover character, Luca Guadagnino, tells Carlos Primo. The Italian filmmaker has just released Rivals, a “dramatic, sports and romantic comedy” set in the elite competition that, frankly, has everything, starting with an affectionate sexual threesome between its gorgeous protagonists: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. Indeed, there is something violent and sexual in the shouting, the rackets, the ambition, the money and the injuries of a sport that is supposed to be elegant and tactical, although it has long since ceased to resemble that sport. lawn tennis which a century ago was played with a white shirt and pants.
According to legend, tennis is a gentlemen’s sport populated by charismatic loners: when I was little, my father loved Jimmy Connors, an Englishman who never got upset and knew “even losing.” At that time, in the late eighties, playing tennis was the only option for those of us who, like me, hated football, but were condemned to do some type of physical exercise. The problem, apart from sweating and competing, is that it required concentration. And I remember much more vividly how excited I was to go to class with all stars fuchsias and purple Bermuda shorts with a washed effect than my expertise with the racket. I have few memories on the slopes. The problem is not that I was bad, even if I was. There were very good ones! The cafeteria of the Toledo tennis club, where I played in the summers, was lined with enlarged photos of my friend Quique and his older brothers, who won tournaments every year. So my arranged marriage with rackets was short-lived. My father played well and he wanted me to play too, but he only insisted as much as necessary before my lack of enthusiasm fell under his own weight.
My memories of tennis, warm and blurry—they are not even traumatic—contrast with the phenomenon of ultra-competitive supermen embodied by Alcaraz, Djokovic or Rafa Nadal. In RivalsLuca Guadagnino has managed to capture that resounding sex appeal. And also his dark face: “In tennis I also discovered something that is more familiar to me, which is the way in which people build armor to achieve their goals, and to hide the goals they want to achieve,” the filmmaker tells Carlos at another point in the interview. Repression, violence, desire and the consequences of the tension between them form a plot thread very close to Guadagnino: from the summer love between a teenager and his father’s assistant to Call me by your name to the bourgeois prison of Io sono l’amore or, more recently, the awkward cannibal romance of to the bones. The director concludes his reasoning: “Man fears his own desire.”
Before you think too much about all this I just told you—sex! masculinity! repression! tennis courts!—it is worth remembering that, in recent weeks, Zendaya has promoted Rivals dressed in a yellow tennis ball and with a real ball at the height of her navel. Or with a white dress decorated with small shiny rackets. Or with various variations of a tennis player’s skirt vintage. His co-stars have not lent themselves to that glamorous form of disguise. Taking into account that she rules the plot and that the song in the movie trailer is Maneaterby Nelly Furtado, maybe what happens here is that… Zendaya has eaten the knights!
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