Film review with Zendaya

Tennis’ reputation as a “boring sport” is understandable, although any self-respecting fan of the game has a list of counterarguments to counter. The matches are long, most of the points played don’t matter in truth. It is a sport of physical and psychological endurance – which does not easily translate into spectacle. It is also about connection, the incessant (and often fruitless) search for a conversation between players. “It’s a relationship”points out Tashi (Zendaya) at a certain point Rivalsand the film knows she’s right – a relationship of looks and screams thrown from one side of the court to the other, of past stories crossing and being thrown into the air in front of the tete-a-tete that single moment of tension.

This is the sneaker that Luca Guadagnino mine incessantly in Rivals, in order to extract what is missing in cinema: the electricity of human relationships thrown onto the screen. The filmmaker of Suspiria It is Call Me By Your Name understands, above all, that the newcomer’s script Justin Kuritzkes lives and dies for these relationships, which he only works if he conveys to us the unspeakable tension of the connection between these people, tangled as they are in cultural narratives of success, failure and anything in between. Seeing them get caught up in, lost in, and freed from these ideas, the psychosexual and performance neuroses they create, is where Kuritzkes’ interest in this story lies – but it’s on Guadagnino’s shoulders to make us interested too.

As a good talent curator, the filmmaker knows exactly who to bring close to him to create this atmosphere. Trent Reznor It is Atticus Rossfor example, are key figures in providing a soundtrack inspired by eurodance 90s style, which Guadagnino employs without any subtlety and often at the back of the narrative. Faced with the peaks and valleys of a plot that meanders through the history of a love triangle, Rivals calls on Reznor & Ross’s synths as an admittedly cheap but undeniably energizing trick—when the film cranks the track up, we know it’s time to sit up straight and pay attention.

Luckily, Guadagnino has other tricks up his sleeve to justify this “scare”. It is in the hands of two of the filmmaker’s previous collaborators, the director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and the assembler Marco Costa, the mission of staging the games and conversations between the protagonists with the same sharp verve. For his part, Mukdeeprom seeks to penetrate the characters’ perspectives whenever possible, whether with a first-person shot during a game or with the occasional recording of a body dynamic – the feet of a Mike Faist It is Josh O’Connor tangled, pulling each other towards each other, when the two sit on a bench, the harrowing speed of Zendaya and O’Connor’s movements inside a car during a typhoon, and so on.

Costa, on the other hand, shows dexterity by concentrating all these records and creating with them a language that embraces the vulgarity of TV commercials and pornography softcore without needing to do anything other than suggest the most prurient aspects of both modalities. It is not the case to say that Rivals clings to prestige cinema or softens its content to fit the limited palate of a specific audience – it’s just that he has much more fun sublimating his impulses (the erotic and the marketing ones), damming up their energy to release in the form of verbal clashes, racket beatings, dancing between frustrated bodies on the double bed, in the back seat of the car, and on the tennis court.

Rivals It is better for showing us (almost) nothing, and perhaps this is the biggest lesson that Guadagnino takes from tennis, rather than from cinema. From a sport that so often comes down to explaining between the lines, to the creation of a narrative that exists almost in parallel to what actually happens on the court, he made a film that finds its strength, undermines its anguish and its pleasure, from the implication – and perhaps the performance of its protagonist trio is what makes this clearest. From the disguised phlegm of Zendaya’s performance to the deep need for de-responsibility that lives in Mike Faist’s eyes, to the crooked smile with which Josh O’Connor assumes the role of a scoundrel, without ever giving up his search for validation… the cast of Rivals resides entirely in the silences where humanity finds itself.

And maybe that’s why it’s so absolutely sensational (there is no other word) watching their encounters and disagreements culminate in a game of tennis. What Rivals ends with what less enthusiastic viewers will call an “open ending” but doesn’t leave a hint of “I want more,” it’s a testament to the fact that the real story is happening beneath the surface. It’s a relationship, Tashi would say, seconds before letting out a guttural scream of euphoria.