Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is being called the sexiest movie of 2024 (sorry, Madame Web!), but there are no actual on-screen sex scenes. The only, ahem, strokes are tennis strokes.
At the Challengers premiere earlier this week, Zendaya told IndieWire, “What’s really special about this movie is that it is incredibly sexy, but there surprisingly [are] no sex scenes.’ I’ve been asked a lot about sex scenes from people who have seen the movie, and I’m like, ‘What sex scenes?’” She continued, “We keep saying that tennis is the sex in the movie, and tennis, I think, holds a metaphor for a lot of things — desires, passion, pain, anger, frustration — I think they all use tennis as this way of communicating with each other when they just don’t have the words.”
Challengers is the best thing to happen to tennis since Snoopy Tennis was released on the Game Boy Color.
Here’s more:
From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach and a force of nature who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court. Married to a champion on a losing streak (Mike Faist), Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick (Josh O’Connor) – his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. As their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself, what will it cost to win.
Challengers, which also stars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, opens in theaters on April 26.