BEST OF 2024
CHALLENGERS
WORDS Katie Kasperson
I ntroducing a new love triangle to the cultural conversation, Challengers – directed by Call Me By Your Name ’s Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes – is a sexy tennis movie that uses the sport as a metaphor for all relationships. Starring Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a feisty ex-athlete; Mike Faist as Art Donaldson, her pro player husband; and Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig, Tashi’s ex-bf and Art’s ex-bff, the film follows the trio over the course of 13 definitive years. Backed by a score that could set clubs ablaze, Challengers mixes fast-paced tennis with slower, more meditative cinematography by Guadagnino’s regular collaborator, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Their third film together after Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria , Challengers employs some creative camerawork – particularly in the final sequence, or the match point. The camera repeatedly changes POV, hovering above the court and offering a bird’s-eye view, then dropping below and looking up (filmed beneath a glass floor), then becoming the ball itself. Mukdeeprom also uses a split dioptre to frame Tashi in between Art and Patrick, all in focus, demonstrating her allegiance to both yet neither. While the film is framed by this high-stakes match, the stakes are only made such by the characters’ collective backstory. Told through flashbacks, it’s the off-court action that carries the drama, from Tashi encouraging Art and Patrick to kiss and watching with a smug expression, to Tashi experiencing a career-ending injury, to Patrick picking her up in a windstorm the night before the New Rochelle Challenger final, which pits the two men against each other. This latter scene is particularly breathtaking. Patrick and Tashi face one another in an empty car park illuminated by red brake lights – the wind whipping them both, the frame rate slowing while the music crescendos – and the two share a moment that has been years in the making. While the hyperactive, adrenaline-heavy scenes are technically impressive, it is ones like these that make Challengers truly aesthetically exciting.
© 2023 METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
SLOW HORSES
WORDS Katie Kasperson
N ow in its fourth season, and with the fifth already fast approaching, spy thriller Slow Horses continues to paint London in a decidedly ‘unsexy’ light, according to DOP Danny Cohen. Unlike the worlds of James Bond or Jason Bourne, Jackson Lamb’s (played by Gary Oldman) is much grittier and more tactile, shedding light on the oft-overlooked areas of the Big Smoke. The series incorporates aerial cinematography, once again by Jeremy Braben, who mixed establishing shots with in-air action footage filmed largely at night. It is also thanks to Cohen, who shot the series’ first, second, fourth and fifth seasons, that Slow Horses subverts expectations about what a spy thriller should be – and how it should look. Mostly, it is about everyday people who just so happen to be spies. While the series’ style reflects this mediocrity, it is far from a visual bore.
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