Hitting a tennis ball against a wall tends to get old in roughly the time it will take to read this sentence. Canadian doubles, or two-against-one, is the last refuge of the desperate, a configuration that leaves no player fully satisfied. Tennis has doubles; not throuples. This is a sport of even numbers, of symmetry. It has a particular aversion to the number three.
This geometry is thrown into sharp—and often uncomfortable—relief in the film Challengers, which opened on Friday.
This is a … well … let’s stop here for definitional discussion. The movie features plenty of tennis and competition but is way too complex (and sexual) to be considered a traditional “sports film” on the order of, say Hoosiers or even Bull Durham. It’s mordantly funny at times; but too dark (and sexual) for the designation of comedy. It can’t be considered a thriller, so long as it (spoiler) has a lame, cop-out of an ending—one of the film’s few flagrant unforced errors.
