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The
theme of love tested under
tense or perilous
circumstances has been a
staple of romantic films
for as long as the genre
has existed. Two
movies released earlier
this year—Luca
Guadagnino’s Challengers and David Leitch’s The
Fall Guy—provide entertaining variations on this theme.
Challengers, which
Guadagnino directed from a
screenplay by Justin
Kuritzkes, is about the
romantic and professional
competition between a trio
of tennis
players—Art
Donaldson (Mike Faist),
Patrick Zweig (Josh
O’Connor), and Tashi
Duncan (Zendaya).
All three are in different
situations at the
beginning of the
film. Art, a model
of professional dedication
and discipline, is a
reigning superstar of
tennis; Tashi, whose hopes
for a star career were
ended forever by an
injury, is his wife and
coach. Patrick, a
freewheeling hotdog who
turned pro the minute he
left high school, has
worked his way down in the
tennis world and is now
living out of his car.
Art and Patrick, once
close friends and
roommates, are estranged,
their rivalry over Tashi
being only one reason for
that. After years of
not seeing each other,
they meet unexpectedly at
a “Challenger”
(second-tier) tournament
in New Rochelle, N.Y., at
opposite ends of the
court. Both have a lot
riding on this
match. Art, recently
sidelined by an injury,
needs the win to qualify
for the U.S. Open and a
potential Career Grand
Slam. Patrick just
needs to stay on the tour.
The match is crucial not
only for them, but for
Tashi. She has lived
a star career vicariously
through Art and cannot
accept him as a
loser. Meanwhile, it
is the understatement of
the century to say her
feelings toward Patrick
are complicated.
Guadagnino and Kuritzkes
lead this trio through a
twisty, non-linear
narrative that offers
constant surprises as to
how Art, Tashi, and
Patrick have alternately
loved and betrayed each
other over the
years. Guadagnino is
a specialist in love, sex,
and romance, as his
“Love
Trilogy”—I
Am Love, A Bigger Splash,
Call Me by Your Name—proves beyond doubt. But Challengers is
far removed from those
lyrical if sometimes
lethal films.
Art, Tashi, and Patrick are competitors first and foremost. For most of Challengers, if you were to ask the characters how they felt about each other, Art
and Tashi would say they hated Patrick, and vice versa. All three see everything,
including love and sex, as a zero-sum game. This is apparent from the first
moment that Art and Patrick—whom we first see as teenagers, best friends and
doubles partners—lay eyes on Tashi at a high-level tournament. It is hard to say
what they lust after more--Tashi or the trophy she just won. The point is made
even more strongly when Tashi pays an impromptu visit to Art and Patrick’s hotel
room. The ensuing lovemaking leaves no doubt that what we have here is not a
love triangle, but a genuine menage a’ trois.
This being a Guadagnino movie, you can bet the sex is steamy and the stars
frequently undressed. (One sexually charged scene, in fact, takes place in
a sauna.) But the sex isn’t lyrical, the way it was in the Love Trilogy. Guadagnino
and cinematographer Sayonbhu Mukdeeprom immerse us in the intense
physicality of the film’s action, as they did in Call Me by Your Name. But the
physicality in Challengers has mostly to do with the exertion of sports
competition. In one scene toward the end, Art and Patrick alternately drip
enormous gobs of sweat into the camera.
Anchored by the excellent performances of its trio of stars, Challengers is an
engrossing dramedy about sports professionals who strain to find balance in their
public and private lives. The nail-biting tennis match between Art and Patrick
builds to a last-second resolution that is intensely satisfying, for the three main
characters as well as the audience.
The Fall Guy—based on the 1980s series starring Lee Majors, who contributes a
cameo--is also intense, but in a jokier, more lighthearted way. More of an action
comedy than a romantic one, and more of a tribute to Hollywood stuntmen than
anything else, The Fall Guy is a hair-raising variation on the story of worthy young
lovers kept apart by circumstance.
Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is the stunt double for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor
-Johnson), an arrogant action star who brags constantly that he does all his own
stunts—even in front of the stuntmen who do his stunts. Ryder’s endless ego is
endlessly flattered by Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), his Machiavellian, Diet
Coke-guzzling producer. Meanwhile, Colt is carrying on a romance with Jody
Moreno (Emily Blunt), a young camerawoman with ambitions to become a
director.
Everything falls apart when Colt is seriously injured in a stunt fall that he thought
he had planned meticulously. Eighteen months later, he is the world’s most
daredevil parking valet. He is convinced he is past it as a stuntman, and he has
also broken off with Jody, before whom he feels he shamed himself.
Things change when Gail visits Colt. Jody is directing her first film, a science
fiction epic titled Metalstorm, and according to Gail she asked specifically for Colt
to be a stuntman on the movie. Colt hops a plane to Australia, where Metalstorm is being filmed. There he finds that Jody not only didn’t ask for him, she hates his
guts because she took his disappearance as desertion.
Colt realizes he desperately wants Jody back. But soon Gail distracts him in that
goal. Tom, she tells him, has disappeared after getting in trouble with drug
dealers, and she needs Colt to find him before the backers of Metalstorm find out
and cancel the project.
And there, to paraphrase Art Spiegelman, is where all of Colt’s troubles begin.
Without giving away plot points, Gail intends Colt to be a fall guy in more than one
sense of the term.
There are multiple McGuffins going on in The Fall Guy. For Colt, it’s getting Jody
back. For Jody, it’s successfully completing Metalstorm. For Gail, it’s protecting
her meal ticket, Tom Ryder. What The Fall Guy is really about, of course, is
providing an excuse to display the spectacular work of multiple stuntmen in as
many explosions, free falls, conflagrations and car crashes as possible. Many of
these stunt extravaganzas are designed specifically to keep Colt and Jody apart. In
one long sequence, Colt battles the bad guys in a manic car chase which speeds
right past the bar where Colt is supposed to meet Jody for karaoke. (Of course,
neither Jody nor anyone else in the bar notices the mayhem occurring outside.)
Among other things, David Leitch has been a stunt double for Brad Pitt, and
Gosling will make you think immediately of Pitt in Once Upon a Time…in
Hollywood. Gosling shares with Pitt a breezy, self-deprecating panache that is
superbly entertaining. (They both share that with Cary Grant in North by
Northwest and Jackie Chan in every movie he ever made.) Gosling and Emily
Blunt have wonderful chemistry, and the supporting cast is excellent, including
Waddingham, Taylor-Johnson, Stephanie Hsu as Tom’s personal assistant and
Winston Duke as Colt’s stunt coordinator and best friend.
The Fall Guy doesn’t try to do anything except give you a good time, and that it
does. Challengers, conversely, is a serious and sexy consideration of how being an
apex competitor affects both love and life. If you haven’t had a chance to fit them
into your entertainment schedule, I strongly suggest you do so.
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