131 min | R | April 26, 2024 | Amazon MGM Studios
Luca Guadagnino makes a tennis movie that is actually a three-way love story shot like an action thriller. Zendaya commands the screen. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross turn tennis into war.
Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig were best friends and doubles partners as teenagers. Then Tashi Duncan walked into their lives and everything detonated. Thirteen years later, Art is a champion married to Tashi, his coach. Patrick is a washed-up journeyman playing satellite tournaments. They meet across the net at a Challenger event and the film uses the match as a frame to unravel the history of desire and betrayal that brought them here. The structure is non-linear. The payoff is devastating.
Zendaya plays Tashi with the precise authority of a woman who knows she is the most powerful person in every room. She is not the love interest. She is the architect. The two men orbit her and she controls the gravity. It is a star performance. Josh O’Connor plays Patrick with wounded charm and reckless hunger. Mike Faist plays Art with the controlled anxiety of a man who won everything and enjoys none of it. The triangle works because all three performances are specific about what each character wants and what they are willing to destroy to get it.
Guadagnino directs with a visual energy that makes tennis feel like combat. The camera goes inside the ball. It lives at net level. It captures sweat and muscle and the specific violence of a body pushed past its limits. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver a score that is electronic and propulsive and completely unhinged for a sports movie. The music turns every rally into a war. The script by Justin Kuritzkes moves through timelines with confidence. Every scene does double work. Every line of dialogue means more than it appears to.
This is the most purely entertaining film of the year so far. Guadagnino takes a love triangle and a tennis match and makes them feel like the stakes could not be higher. The final point of the match is one of the best sequences in recent cinema. Three people collide and the film freezes the moment before impact. It is exhilarating.