Rivals movie review. Tennis has never been so hot – AVmania.cz

Now the Sicilian director has the opportunity to enter the universal mainstream, as indicated both by the conformist theme of Challengers, but also by Zendaya as today’s biggest celebrity under thirty in the lead role.

We usually tend to view such a trajectory as a creative failure and a commercial flop, but who could be mad at Guadagnini for making an early contender for one of the films of the year?

When we tell you what Rivals is about, you might be shaking your head. We have a love triangle between two former inseparable friends, now sports rivals, and a woman who first dated one of them, but ended up breaking up and starting a family with the other.

It is, in many ways, a very mechanical film, which very clearly determines the role of each of the central trio so that their nature and motivations are in perfect counterbalance to each other. Patrick (Josh O’Connor) represents untamed raw talent, incalculability and a demonstrably anti-authoritarian nature. No wonder Tasha (Zendaya) fell for him first.

But when he turns out to be extremely unreliable and unpromising for the future (despite being from a wealthy background, he refuses to use his family’s resources and as a result does not have a great professional prospect), she changes her mind and ends up with Art (Mike Faist). In his youth, he clearly paid for the weaker of the pair, yet with Tasha by his side, thanks to his diligence, but also a lot of commercial commitments, he worked his way up to the position of the world’s leading tennis player.

It’s about everything. And for nothing

More than ten years have passed since the two friends broke up. Art is experiencing a career and personal crisis, which he cannot afford. With thirty on his neck, he doesn’t have much time left if he wants to end his otherwise very successful career with one more prestigious cup. But does he even want it? On the other hand, Patrick, in his stubborn naivety, is still waiting for an opportunity to break through purely due to his talent, and is already a laughing stock to most people. Yet he remains the one Art has never been able to defeat.

And at this very moment, after a decade without mutual contact, the two men meet during a match that they believe will decide the rest of their professional and ultimately personal lives. Of course, they advance to the finals, where they only face each other. And Zendaya, in the audience, darts her eyes between opposite sides of the field, reminiscing about everything that was.

It is this one match that frames the narrative, as we run from it fifteen years into the past and follow this complicated triangle from its inception. Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes gradually reveal information that the characters have long known. This can often lead to a rather frustrating experience as the audience is confused by artificial mysteries. But in this case, the chosen procedure works great and it is extremely exciting to go through the individual layers of the relationship, each of which reveals some new motivation, parallel or consequence of previous actions.

Rivals is a film full of parallels and repetitions at the level of dialogues and props. It’s fun to follow the journey of a striking “I Told You So” t-shirt through the years. The filmmakers never tell us to focus on him, but at the same time they make sure we don’t overlook him.

In the same way, the lines that the characters say to each other in one context at eighteen and five years later the same phrase is uttered with an ironic or bitter touch also return. We are not talking about subtle nuances or subtext here, this element of the film consistently draws attention to itself, which provokes some viewers. Again we come back to the fact that Rivals is a very mechanical, some would say semi-pathetic film, where practically everything is named out loud and everything has a role. But perhaps it is not necessary to consider it as a mistake, rather as a part of the game. In it, players also exist within the confines of pre-agreed attributes and rules.

Sports dramas have it harder than it seems, because conveying an authentic experience of a sports match is almost impossible. So our interest needs to be motivated differently. Either sport becomes nothing more than a backdrop for personal drama, or a way needs to be found to explain that winning a match also solves some other problem. Remember when Rocky won the Cold War by defeating Ivan Drago?

Something like that, only mostly on a smaller scale. Rivals actively play with this principle, and tennis organically oscillates between self-importance and the role of a metaphor for the whole of life. Just as the heroes are not clear about the extent to which their individuality transcends the boundaries of sport, the film itself is deliberately lost in this. Ultimately, winning seems like the most important thing in the world, as does pettiness. As a tug of war between two guys as well as an existential threat.

Leave the banana

As far as the much hyped sexuality goes, Rivals is actually a fairly chaste film. None of the three main actors appear completely naked, we don’t even see a direct sexual act – Guadagnini usually gets by with a bit of mucking and cuts the scene. Nevertheless, it is not an exaggeration to claim that this is an extremely sensual film that finds a bottomless source of sexual tension in sports. And all the more so when you pick up the thrown gauntlet in the form of queer reading.

Of course, Guadagnino is famous for films with LGBT+ characters, so there was a question from the beginning: How much will Rivals be immersed in these motifs? The answer is foxy. It is at the same time the most and the least gay film the director has made. For you, it may well be a more irritating gay romance than Give Me Your Name, which is explicitly about a sexual relationship between two men.

However, while the sweet and painful story of Chalamet and Hammer was told in a fairly traditional romantic language, Rivals is at times homoerotic to the point of absurdity. And this despite the fact that, with the exception of the started threesome with Zendaya and one story from early childhood, both heroes are very heteronormative. Or at least that’s what they want to convince us (and themselves).

However, the shot still emphasizes all the physical closeness that was considerable between them in their youth. Inevitably, they spent a lot of time undressing together, Patrick teaching Art to masturbate at twelve (which in itself established their dynamic with each other and Patrick’s natural dominance). The way gentlemen share phallic foods such as bananas and various bars is definitely not random.

One of the possible interpretations of the film is that the reason for the disarray was not Tashi’s “dumping”, but a passionate kiss that the girl provoked her best friends into. Although, very uncharacteristically, not a word was said about him subsequently between the two young men, it is quite possible that this very loss of the barrier, which previously allowed them to be physically close even without a sexual context (which, due to their macho personas, they cannot even accept as a possibility), caused the end of their friendship.

But if the viewer doesn’t want to, they don’t have to consider practically any of it as primary or even necessary reading. For example, Tasha herself can be placed in the center of the narrative, who lost her professional career after her own injury and now has to fulfill her ambitions through the success of her partner, which is very humiliating for her. Not to mention the pressure it put on first Patrick and now Art. Tasha turned him into a world tennis star, but you can’t shake the impression that if the young man had a choice, he would have done something else a long time ago. Both Patrick and Art then fight for Tashi’s recognition rather than her love. They want her more as a trainer than a partner. The fascinating thing about this trio is that they have the ability to support the worst and the best in themselves in equal measure. For the last decade, it seems that the toxic part of their natures has won out. Is it too late to fix it?

Rivals isn’t a complicated movie when you don’t want it to be. It is probably not a problem to throw them off the table as a pretentious sports melodrama, which, accompanied by pulsating music, tells the story of a rather routine love triangle, which the creators clumsily try to expand with a lot of screenwriting crutches. But when you flip the switch and get a little bogged down, it’s an extremely fun and lively ride that allows us to constantly push our ideas about the people depicted and their motivations. Anyway, sitting next to it in the cinema can be a great joy.

Rivals

The review was originally published on the Kinobox.cz website, its author is Martin Svoboda.