I've not shut up about Challengers since I first watched it completely alone in my room on a random night. It completely struck a chord with me; the queerplatonic friendship of two close players in a solo sport, the way the relationship completely shifts the second you're going against each other, the devastation of a sports injury. The casual bisexuality of it all. A common catchphrase that encapsulates all my feelings lately has been "Did you know that Challengers is a movie about judo?" Because TO ME IT IS. I love a good drama about a solo sport because yeah! that's how it be! The last time I felt this way about a specific media was Yuri on Ice. Did you know that Yuri on Ice is a show about judo? And I feel that, at least from what I've seen, I feel like there are some things that are missing from the online Challengers conversations. Like yeah whatever those guys were kind of gay. But I'm begging people to understand how Sports it is. In my opinion they encapsulated so many different perspectives on sports between all three of the main characters so well and now I'm gonna word vomit about it.
There's a scene where Tashi and Patrick are reunited during the college years, and they are making out on Tashi's dorm bed. Patrick's hands move to remove Tashi's bra while they are kissing, but he is unable to unhook it because she's wearing a sports bra. For some reason I am obsessed with this tiny detail and I think it says so much about their characters and hints at the argument that is about to happen between them. Patrick genuinely cares for Tashi and wants her to expose herself to him, physically and emotionally. But Tashi is completely incapable of that because all she knows is tennis. All she knows is sports bra. Her boyfriend came to visit her in college in god knows how long and she doesn't even bother changing out of a sports bra because why would she? As the argument they have soon after reveals, her feelings of passion towards him she can only interpret as tennis. I'm sure deep down Tashi feels some sort of attraction towards both the guys. But she grew up worshipping tennis, and it's brought her success, so she sees no reason why she should form these other kinds of connections with people. That is, until her injury.
The scene where Tashi is quietly sitting at the base of a tree in a hoodie, her face wet with tears, propping up her injured knee, is one of the most devastating scenes to watch for me. Imagine putting all your hardest work into one thing only for it to be completely ruined by something utterly out of your control, and what's more, that thing is your own body. She has to live not only looking at it for the rest of her life, but she has to continue to nurture and care for her body as if it hasn't completely betrayed her and ruined her life. There's a brief shot at the beginning of the movie where Tashi applies some sort of cream to her surgery scar. I also kind of winced at this scene. It communicated so much. She's forced to look at the scar in a mirror and treat it with love, because what other option does she have? And it's so cruel of the universe to have that happen holy shit.
Challengers may be a story about how Tashi selfishly homewrecked a homoerotic friendship and now Art and Patrick must process their complicated relationship with each other, but to me Tashi reads as a girl whose life was so consumed by competition and self-improvement from a young age that she struggles to prioritize relationships with people. I like to think that it's only until the end of the movie that it truly clicks to her, when Art and Patrick's match has been won. It mirrors what she says to the boys at the beach: "Tennis is a relationship." It calls back to what she actually wants out of them: "some good fucking tennis". At first I thought Tashi's final scream was that she finally got to see that "good fucking tennis" out of both of them, since she lives for tennis, but I also think that she finally realizes that she's been rooting for Art, not because Art's been playing in her place, but because they have a genuine human connection, something that up until this point Tashi has struggled to understand.
Thank you for reading. In conclusion:
