This is one tennis film that really is not about tennis at all. As the character played by Zendaya states it plainly, it’s about relationships. Luca Guadagnino is a director who seems to be specializing in erotic passion in all its forms and so this is right up his alley. Here the physicality of sports stands in for sex and their competitiveness fuels the passion. It’s a slick, bold and incredibly sexy film but I think it overdoes the stylistic touches and shifts in time.

In the present, Art Donaldson is a successful professional tennis player while Tashi Duncan is both his wife and his coach. However he has been slowing down and has just lost a match he should have won. To rebuild his confidence, Tashi signs him up for an easier Challenger event in New Rochelle. Also at the same event is Patrick Zweig, a player who is down on his luck and living out of his car. They inevitably face each other as Tashi watches from the stands. Flashbacks reveal the extensive history the three have together. Art and Patrick have been best friends since childhood and attended a tennis academy together. At the US Open as juniors, they encounter Tashi, then a rising star in women’s tennis, and both fall in love with her. When Patrick wins the finals event, he is the one who starts dating Tashi but Art still runs into her as they both attend Stanford University. The couple gets into an argument when Tashi tries insistently to coach Patrick so he is absent when she is injured in a match while Art is at her side. The injury turns out to be serious enough to end her career and leads to her breaking up with Patrick.

The film aggressively shifts between scenes in the past and the present in order to keep the audience in suspense over what really happened between them. It’s not hard to follow the narrative but I found the quick changes in vibes off-putting. Similarly the film is a bit too heavy-handed with the stylistic touches such as there being a heavy windstorm during the night right before the final match between Art and Patrick. Still, I can’t deny that this is a slick, sexy film just as the director intended. It seems so obvious in retrospect that the sheer physicality of high-level sports would translate perfectly to eroticism. The film doesn’t care about the actual sport of tennis itself. What it cares about is the power in their coiled muscles, the sweat dripping from their bodies, their kinetic movement on the court and how it consumes every iota of effort in their bodies and minds. In effect, the tennis playing scenes are the sex scenes in what feels a lot like an erotic thriller.

The dynamic between the three main characters is so deliciously rich that you could armchair psychoanalyze them all day. As Tashi observes when she first meets the two best buddies, there’s a latent homoeroticism between the two and she doesn’t want to be a homewrecker. Of the two, Patrick is the more dominant, falling naturally into the role of the big brother, but seemingly lacks the self-discipline to be a truly great tennis player. Art lacks confidence but flourishes with Tashi managing his training, his career and even his life. Then there’s Tashi who is far more passionate and serious about tennis than either of them and would have been one of the world’s greatest players if not for her freak injury. She’s more attracted to Patrick but it is Art who gives her the control that she craves and lets her remain as part of the tennis world. I suppose one weakness of the film is that it’s only about the three of them as there aren’t any supporting characters of note. Even the fact that Art and Tashi have a daughter together barely alter their dynamic.

I’d say that this is more attractive and approachable film than the other two Guadagnino films we’ve seen but I’d rank it below Call Me by Your Name. I’m not convinced that Zendaya is good enough of an actress to pull off these serious roles and neither of the two male leads have the intensity of Timothée Chalamet. Also, the pacing in this one gets annoying and it tries too hard to be stylish. But I do love how it completely undermines what the traditional sports film should be about.