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Warning: This article includes major spoilers for the 2024 film Challengers.
Last summer, when MGM studios released the first trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, which included a Rihanna “S&M” needle drop and an MPA warning for “some sexual content and graphic nudity,” one question almost immediately struck group chats, work DMs, and casual brunch conversations alike: Is there a threesome in this movie or what?
After a heated tennis-tournament night, the film spans about a decade in the lives of Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and her two sometimes-paramours, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). As is evident in the trailer, this is a movie about tennis, and therefore it includes all of the grunting and lobbing your heart could desire. But we know that what you want to know before spending cash on a movie ticket is whether or not these three actually get it on together.
At the onset of its marketing, Challengers felt primed to take up the baton left by two 2023 films that flirted with entering the ménage à trois hall of fame. There was Passages, which was sexy and wistful but had no actual threesome in that love triangle, and Past Lives, which was not really erotic at all (but coincidentally, one of the boyfriends in that movie is also named Arthur, and its director, Celine Song, is married to Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes). As you’ll see in the trailer, something transpires between the core trio in Challengers, and it’s clearly enough to spurn longtime rivalries and resentments. But could this film really be the champion of this year’s threesome moment?
Well, yes and no. If you’re asking, literally, Do these three characters have sex with each other?, I’m heartbroken to tell you: No, they only kiss. When Tashi visits Art and Patrick in their shared hotel room that first night, they all make out for a while before she pulls away and leaves them for the night, satisfied to have seen the boys smooch. That’s right, Challengers is, in part, a movie about how kissing someone — or two someones! — ten years ago can ruin your whole 20s and early 30s. On one hand, this decision feels frustratingly chaste for a film that has been marketed as sexy. Admittedly, though, it is still quite a sexy movie — just more in a Tumblr-GIF set kind of way than an actual sex-scene way. In fact, we never actually see any of the characters have sex in this film (Art’s boner is visible in one scene, but only underneath his boxers, and the camera cuts away from Tashi’s dalliances with Art and Patrick throughout the ages before we see so much as a backside from any of them). Still, the fact that the driving tension of the film is literally kissing is funny, refreshingly so, granting the story and its characters a natural lightness. Chill out! It’s only kissing! Basically, if ever there was a movie about edging, it’s this one (it’s also about tennis).
However, the root of the question remains this: If three people are kissing, is it still a threesome? Is kissing sex? My natural instinct and the meanest person in my freshman-year college dorm would say no. ClickHole would say yes. Urban Dictionary defines a threesome as both “Three people fucking at the same time” (Challengers does not qualify) and “Having your cake and eating it too, then watching your cake eat another cake” (Challengers kind of qualifies). The Britannica dictionary defines a threesome as “a group of three people or things” (Challengers qualifies!), and the Oxford English Dictionary is (newly?) paywalled. We’ve attempted to get in touch with Guadagnino and Kuritzkes to get their takes, but they couldn’t be reached for comment. So our official verdict in the case The Movie Challengers v. Is There a Threesome is “not really — but it’s fine.” I don’t want to spoil any more of this movie than I already have, but what I can tell you is that there is catharsis waiting on the other side of this 131-minute ride. Everyone goes home feeling satisfied, which makes it even better than an actual threesome.
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Fran Hoepfner , 2024-04-22 17:20:08
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