The mere presence of sex onscreen was enough to make ’80s and ’90s cinema “controversial,” but by 2017 it was the absence of it in Call Me by Your Name that had tongues wagging. Specifically the camera panning away from Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) as they consummate their simmering attraction. It was a conscious act of circumnavigation that director Luca Guadagnino was asked about for years—“To put our gaze upon their lovemaking would have been a sort of unkind intrusion,” he said at the 2017 New York Film Festival, for example. Still, many wondered if he, a gay man himself, was evincing a certain squeamishness toward gay sex, especially because the most explicit sex in the movie (a love story between men) was straight.
Challengers similarly skimps on sex, technically, but the effect is way less distracting thanks to the considerable heat generated by stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist. The movie gets about as explicit as having them kiss, though the kissing is deep and passionate enough to give the impression that both of these guys are truly into Zendaya. Each other? Not so much, but that’s kind of what’s so hot about it. In the flashback scene in which tennis star Tashi visits the hotel room of the decidedly less accomplished players (and best friends) Patrick and Art, she orders them to kiss, and they do. This does nothing to make things weird between them (they’re comfortable enough that Patrick slaps Mike’s boxer-clad boner after Tashi leaves him excited and unrelieved). They continue their close friendship (so close that at times they have conversations with their faces inches away) at least for a while—eventually, Tashi comes between them. But the story is less focused on her individual relationships with them than the one the two men share. Challengers is a movie about intimacy, specifically intimacy among men—that which may include sexual contact but generally transcends it. It’s about the extent to which the guys know each other, the way they look deep into each other’s eyes, their warm dynamic, the brotherly love so clear that it doesn’t need to be spoken out loud. Challengers is not a sex movie, by any stretch, but it is unmistakably sexy.
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