The most anticipated sports drama, directed by Luca Guadagnino, was released in theaters April 22. It surely did not disappoint with an all-star cast consisting of Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor. After watching the film, there’s only one word to describe it: intense.
The premise centers on three tennis players, whose lives intertwine both on and off the court.
Zendaya plays Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach for her husband, Art Donaldson, played by Faist, who has been on a recent losing streak. Duncan enters Donaldson in a challengers event, where O’Connor’s character, Patrick Zweig, is also competing. Tensions rise as Zweig, Duncan’s ex-boyfriend, is also Donaldson’s former best friend.
The film opens with Donaldson and Zweig facing each other on the court during the first set of the match. Immediately, the friction between the two characters is too much to ignore.
The cinematography, along with the electronic underscore, amps up the suspense between each interaction, whether it’s between Tashi and Patrick, Tashi and Art, or Art and Patrick.
It has been a long time since a film portrayed a love triangle this messy and this tense. And this goes for the storytelling as well.
The technique of storytelling was that throughout the match, the film goes back to the past to show the events leading to the day of the tournament. It’s not in chronological order, which makes the audience wonder even more about what had happened in between.
Throughout the film, it seems blatant that Zweig and Duncan are not good people. Zweig is shown as childish and arrogant, while Duncan is prideful and competitive. But one thing is clear, Donaldson is not innocent himself.
This film will trick the audience into thinking that Patrick is the villain, vying for revenge against Tashi and Art, or that Tashi is the antagonist for playing both of the boys, but Art is the one who ignited the whole drama.
There is more tension that underlies not between Duncan and one of the boys but between the boys instead. This is what makes the dynamic of the three more complicated to decipher as their desires become blurred.
The film concludes with an open ending and gives each character what they want. Duncan watches a good tennis game, and the boys reconcile with each other. No matter how it’s interpreted the moral of the story is: no person is good.
