What We Sacrifice for Ambition: The Wounds of Love and Glory in ‘Challengers’
By Natalie McCarty
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What many argue to be the “movie of the year,” Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino, is not just a sports drama, nor is it merely a love triangle. It’s a deeply introspective look at ambition, betrayal, and the aching gulf between the lives we live and the ones we long for. Set against the sweaty, competitive backdrop of professional tennis, the film unravels the tangled lives of its three protagonists Tashi, Art, and Patrick—played with aching brilliance by Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor respectively.
At its core, Challengers is less about the game of tennis and more about the games we play with each other, and, truthfully, ourselves. It probes the haunting question many of us face: What do you do when you wake up and realize the life you’re living is not the one you were meant for?
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Zendaya’s Tashi is a tour de force of contradictions—a former tennis prodigy turned coach, trapped by circumstance and her own unfulfilled potential. Her physical injury (a devastating knee break) becomes the film’s most blatant metaphor. Not just for her shattered athletic dreams, but for the deep fractures in her relationships with her husband, Art (Mike Faist), and his childhood best friend, Patrick (Josh O’Connor). Watching Zendaya work through the complexities of Tashi is electric. She plays her with precision, layering charisma with an undertow of bitterness and unspoken grief.
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There’s a scene in which Tashi gazes at Art, her husband and now protégé, not with love but with a kind of resigned affection. Art, played with raw vulnerability by Faist, is the man who has loved Tashi relentlessly, but it’s clear that love is not the same as respect. Faist delivers a heartbreakingly tender performance, turning Art into a man you want to root for even as his quiet desperation becomes painfully obvious. His devotion to Tashi is unwavering, but the love between them feels transactional, weighed down by the life she’s sacrificed and the glory she’s funneled into him. Heard, sister.
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Then there’s Patrick who is cocky, damaged, and very magnetic. O’Connor is riveting, bringing an unnerving energy to a man who feels like he’s been sidelined his whole life. Patrick and Tashi share an undeniable chemistry, one that feels both inevitable and destructive. If Art represents home, stability, and sacrifice, Patrick is the mirror: the person who reflects Tashi’s hunger for ambition, for chaos, for the life she believes was stolen from her. O’Connor makes Patrick achingly human, turning what could have been a stock “other man” role into something deeply compelling.
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And then, of course, Patrick and Art’s relationship is as charged and complicated as their rivalry on the tennis court. Once close friends and doubles partners, their bond was fractured by betrayal, jealousy, and unspoken feelings that festered over the years. Though they clash as adversaries, their dynamic is fueled by a lingering intimacy neither can fully escape. Their relationship is less about winning and losing and more about reckoning with the unresolved tension that keeps pulling them back into each other’s orbit, no matter how much damage it causes.
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The film’s brilliance lies in its refusal to let any character off the hook. Tashi, Art, and Patrick are all culpable, all victims of each other’s choices and their own delusions. Guadagnino deftly captures the toxicity of their dynamic, showing how love, jealousy, and ambition intertwine. The cinematography mirrors this tension—sweaty, close-up shots of the tennis court morph into intimate, almost claustrophobic portraits of these three people caught in a web of their own making.
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And what of the sport itself? Tennis, in Challengers, becomes a character in its own right. The court is a battleground, a stage for power plays and silent confessions. The physicality of the game is paralleled by the emotional brutality of the relationships. Guadagnino captures the sheer exhaustion of it all—the grueling matches, the impossible expectations, the unrelenting pressure of chasing greatness.
The film lingers on the unspoken betrayals, the quiet resentments, and the agonizing choices. What does it mean to love someone when they are both your greatest supporter and your greatest obstacle? How do you reconcile the parts of yourself that crave ambition with the parts that crave connection?
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Tashi’s story is perhaps the most devastating of all. How do you confess to yourself that you would trade everything—your marriage, your family, your very identity—for an unbroken body that could have made you a champion? Zendaya’s performance is searing, capturing the guilt, the longing, and the self-loathing that come with realizing the person you’ve become is not the one you wanted to be.
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But Challengers also leaves space for the other side of the coin. For Art, what does it mean to love someone who will never fully love you back? And for Patrick, how do you forgive the people who betrayed you, even as you use that betrayal to define your very existence?
The film’s emotional climax comes not on the tennis court but in the quiet moments where the characters are forced to confront themselves and each other. There’s a palpable cruelty in the way they cling to one another—not out of love, but out of an unwillingness to let go of the past.
In the end, Challengers is a masterful exploration of the spaces between people. The chasms one creates. The wounds of love and glory. It’s a film that lingers, that leaves you questioning not just the choices of its characters but the ones you’ve made in your own life.
Ultimately, the film is about the things we hold on to, the things we lose, and the things we’re willing to destroy in the pursuit of something greater. Challengers is, without question, one of the year’s most unforgettable films.
