Club Zweig
Emergency Clarengers Issue
One of the last movies I saw in March of 2020 was Emma., which I still think is quite good. I remember–naively, in retrospect, just days before the pandemic struck–feeling hopeful for the future of movies about cute boys, which in the years prior had seemed stale. While I liked then future star of NETFLIX’S Andrew scott is RIPLEY “Johnny Flynn,” I also remember telling a friend I “kind of liked Mr. Elton more.” I also remember, in the days following Emma., asking my mom if I should catch up on The Crown.
Mr. Elton was, of course, played by Josh O’Connor, who at that time I only knew as being on The Crown, which to me is a lot like being in Ripley. None of this really went anywhere: I became scared of COVID-19 and forgot to catch up on The Crown. While frightened, however, I did make time to watch A Bigger Splash for the first time while drinking Truly lemonades.1 At that time, I was very angry with Luca Guadagnino for making Suspiria, which I had screened on 2 hours of sleep in what I contemporaneously described as the most tortuous 152 minutes of 2018.2 I Am Love was and is a favorite of mine, and Call Me By Your Name is okay, but Suspiria was so horrifically dumb I put on A Bigger Splash really only out of desperation: certainly the director of I Am Love is capable of making more than one good movie? And boy was he! A Bigger Splash works incredibly well for me, if only because Dakota Johnson wears stuff like this:
But there was more trouble ahead: Bones and All was one of the worst movies of 2022. And now he’s making a Zendaya movie?, I thought. I guess I have to stop taking him seriously. Famous last words.
One more piece of context: for the last few weeks I’ve been doing extensive research into a little someone known as the Maestro of Estruscan Graverobbing. I am lukewarm on La Chimera, which I loved much more than Alice Rohrwacher’s last film but feel loses its grip too often on the tactile masculinity of humanist historiography that it, at other times, so masterfully expands: frustrating. No more frustrating, however, than this image and caption:
I love Elena Ferrante! I love Birkenstocks! I loved Mr. Elton’s dirty suits! After Emma. I lost my way, but I started to ask more important questions after La Chimera: what potential does this guy have to make me lose my mind? Is he that hot in real life? Have I not been paying close enough attention? The answers: so much potential you can’t even anticipate the effects: yes: yes, and you owe Fran an apology, who warned us all at the end of last year:
I saw Challengers at 9 PM. For me, that is midnight, but these questions needed urgent answering and I am busy.3 The screening was almost completely full of 20-year-old girls who started squealing the second they finished at the Freestyle machines. I followed them into the theater feeling 100 years old by comparison and virtue of feeling like it was past my bedtime. Not long after the film started, however, Josh O’Connor flippantly opened a car door with his muscular leg, and I felt more vivacious than ever, full of life for years to come. This feeling would continue at such a pitch for the next 2 hours I would frequently lose my breath, stumbling out of the theater only to post about it so much on my Instagram story 2 people unfollowed me. It is what it is, and to be a part of this app supporting a popular actor has its pros and cons. But I remain undeterred.
Matt did a great job breaking down what “occurs” in Challengers, so I’ll leave that to him. What I can offer is a more vibrational reaction to the way it fits in Guadagnino’s career and my mental illness. I think Luca’s biggest contribution is capturing and unraveling that apex of sexual obsession before it becomes insecure or boring; I Am Love might still be his best movie because it consistently and relentlessly keeps that feeling above water as everything else begins to collapse. Where A Bigger Splash and Call Me By Your Name stumble is when the sex goes away entirely and Guadagnino seems to trip through saying things he thinks should be more important than sex, despite seemingly having no conviction about that himself. Challengers rivals–or should I say Challenges!!!! 🎾🎾🎾–I Am Love in returning to sexual intensity at an even louder and less abating ferocity. The only other real difference is that not much else happens in Challengers, at all; there is utterly no attempt at emotional intensity sans sexual desperation, giving Guadagnino fewer, if any, chances to fail.
Zendaya has many chances to fail in Dune, which asks her to show gears turning too delicately. All she accomplishes in that is being Zendaya: an over professionalized contemporary, Earthly lesbian. My beef with Zendaya is less about her skill, though, because winning an Emmy during COVID doesn’t make you an actor, and she doesn’t have long enough of a resume for me to even engage with her as such. I am mainly, constantly, upset with her outfits, which are a 19-year-old anorexic’s idea of how to dress “cool” (bar some indisputable hits amongst many overwrought Halloween costumes). In Challengers, though, I saw the vision Disney did, I guess, in that when “Zendaya is Zendaya” works, she is the most believable flailing, aging hot woman.4 Before 9 PM last night, I also had major beef with “Mike Faist” because marketing Challengers to me as “two boyfriends,” but one is the grave maestro and the other is “Mike Faist” was not effective: that’s one boyfriend. But he, too, surprised me, as the perfect, pathetic husband–not boyfriend, at all–who only gets what he wants when she is made to feel otherwise inferior. More on that in a second.
The most important takeaway from the film was that there is a man named Patrick Zweig, who was like if the grave maestro were American and mean, famously two of the prerequisites to getting on my annual lists of hot guys; I guess you could say he Qualified for the Clare Open after being a Challenger 🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾. I reacted this way about Austin Butler as Elvis and Bradley Cooper as Jackson Maine, and no other time before then or since. Unless you experience Zweig fever for yourself, it is hard for me to explain what his smirking, legs, etc., can do. What can Zweig do for you?
Many reviews have claimed Challengers is “about” competition or bisexuality, but I think those ideas only inflect the moments when Guadagnino is his funniest. One of the movie’s greatest achievements is aggregating a director, composers, cinematographer, and three leads who understand completely what movie they are in, i.e. one where “Tashi Duncan” teaches you how, exactly, “tennis is a relationship.”5 If it’s about anything but sex, it does posit something quite affective about the woman at its center; the two men in her life–pointedly, to her, “2 white boys”–stretch their childish sex games and careerist potential well into their 30s, while she is washed up before she graduates college, doomed to be called only a “coach” and “MILF” for the rest of her life. Despite all her talent, beauty, and machiavellian wit, (spoiler) she also falls into the same trap women are warned about ad nauseam since birth: she can’t help but turn down acclaim for her need for attention from a loserish asshole.
How quickly and pornographically Challengers ensnares its audience in that trap too, though, is its real magic. To me, the film is about little else than this: nothing in the world is more important than people wanting and being able to have sex with you the way you want it. You can get realistic in the ways you think and are told you’re supposed to: about what you’re capable of, what you think you can get, what makes you feel a little less precarious after disaster strikes. Usually that involves a little lying–telling yourself that life isn’t about sex–as Guadagnino has fallen victim to throughout his career. But at the end of the day, the winner is the winner.
In conclusion (read this while listening to link below):
COVID was so awesome at times.
I haven’t watched Suspiria since it came out, but think I would be significantly more generous upon rewatching. I’m not going to though–I’m busy compulsively Googling “mattu healy height” and “josh o cojnnr birthday”).
Ibid.
Flailing Aging Hot is new new Manic Pixie Dream, FYI.
I think the only person who doesn’t know what movie he was a part of is Jonathan Anderson, by the way. The blue dress was marginally disturbing to me.
came here to double-check josh oconnor bday