The director with a Wikipedia page dedicated entirely to “unrealized projects” released two films this year. Challengers excited me in the spring, Queer stumped me in the fall. A spiral into why which led to comparing the Dundas-Yonge Cineplex and the Princess of Wales Theatre.

Also seen on Substack.

If you were lucky enough to see it in theatres before it was unceremoniously dumped on Amazon Prime, Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino) was the event of spring cinema earlier this year. You had to feel the Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross soundtrack in IMAX, the images of sweat so in your face the stench translated, the excitement of anticipating what it ultimately means. The theatre was an insulator — nothing went in, nothing went out. Just the audience and the film, and all they exchanged.

Part of the delight was the surprise of what batshit direction the film would take next. Guadagnino did not play this film straight. I did not predict at any point that the film would take the point-of-view of the tennis ball in Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson’s ultimate match. But the film didn’t reveal this transfigurative ability until the very end, and in only the one sequence. Its function was to form the words “Wait, what?!”, punctuation essential.

This is the art of the blockbuster. Sublime thrill by any means necessary to, and this is important, make it a hit. The “blockbuster” has been relegated to the Spielberg and the legacy franchise. But what excludes the original, the romantic, the small-scale? Twilight and Crazy Rich Asians were adapted romantic blockbusters; original rom-coms were once considered high box office draws. However, Battle of the Sexes with Emma Stone and Steve Carell, the last romantic tennis film, was a commercial failure. It made about 70% of its budget — Challengers made about 170%, with a budget of 55 million compared to Battle’s 18 million. There’s also the extended cultural stay of Challengers, which has wormed itself into internet lexicon as a verb. “To Challengers” is to coax two people, usually men, into a threesome as Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) does to Art and Patrick (Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist). The term even supersedes the aerial disaster — an achievement knowing the internet.

Challengers is a revival of multiple genres: the sports film (the other tennis film of the decade was King Richard, which like Battle of the Sexes didn’t make up its budget in box office), the romantic comedy (along with hits No Hard Feelings and Anyone But You), the erotic thriller (less dark than Basic Instinct but still embodies the spirit). And it’s a modestly successful original. And there’s Oscars buzz, mostly for the soundtrack. 

But Guadagnino did not leave this year at that high. Daniel Craig was announced to star in the director’s adaptation of Burroughs’s 1985 novel Queer in late 2022 — Zendaya was announced for Challengers early 2022. Despite his track record of orphaning projects, Guadagnino got both films done in exactly two years.

Queer had a completely different release strategy. Challengers got a wide release in April 2024 with little fanfare, distributed by Amazon MGM in the US, Warner Bros. internationally. Queer premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2024. A few days later, it played at the Toronto International Film Festival, then BFI London Film Festival and New York Film Festival a month later. Guadagnino, Craig, co-star Drew Starky, and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (also Challengers) appeared to promote the film on the circuit. The film is yet to be released widely. It is set to have a limited release in the US on November 27, as distributed by A24. MUBI owns distribution rights for international territories, including Canada.

Obviously: different content, different distributors, different strategies. Challengers is a young adult sports-romance movie; Queer is a world-trotting Burroughs adaptation. The latter is far more provocative than the former, from title to content to form, though the tamer is still non-normative. In general: Challengers is the crowd-pleaser, Queer is the auteur’s project. I’m sure the cast and crew for either film, which overlap, don’t see it this way. There are artistic merits to Challengers and commercial merits to Queer (not to mention the tumultuous dichotomy). But continuing the thread, a difference in strategy is a difference in target audience is a difference in audience expectations. These two films, one marketed as blockbuster and the other as prestige, are expected to be watched in different ways by different kinds of viewers, the mass and the critical.

Queer is self-serious. At some points, it’s devastating — Craig and Starky carry subtly. Even when Craig is playing it big, his Lee character dramatic and overflowing, there are private feelings whispered by Craig. They aren’t represented by the numerous dreams or hallucinations or fantasies. In turn, Eugene’s inner life is fascinating because we only see glimpses through Starky’s performance. He’s different from Lee. Reserved. Small. I’m critical of Guadagnino’s approach to literalize the abstract, but in this piece I am focused on the effect on the viewer rather than its efficacy.

The self-seriousness can be self-admittedly ridiculous. The way sex can be funny — like Lee and Eugene laughing after their first encounter. There is explicit humor. Lee’s courtship is embarrassing. Jason Schwartzman as comic relief. Then there’s what I call implicit humor. Like a clumsy Lynch. The cartoon-like jungle, the floating man, toothless Omar Apollo. The VFX simulation of yearning and connection were redundant, therefore over-the-top. Even the opening titles, soundtracked by an acoustic cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies”, makes the 90’s high school refrain “everyone is gay” more serious than it needs to be. Kurt Cobain advocated for queer acceptance and was himself not-straight, yet it’s obvious, as he’s said, he invented the line as a teenager. The film seems aware of this implicit humor; it is involved in what is “queer” both narratively and formally (though it’s technically typical). Queer is weird is odd is amusing is funny.

The trouble lies in how to reconcile the implicit humor with all the film asks emotionally. It’s a tragedy. It’s supposed to be depressing. Lover lost, forever closeted, life wasted. True, tragedies can be funny. But what I’m feeling and what I’m reading are at odds. I read Queer as a dramatization of the worst possible ending. It’s a nightmare, yes, but a self-deprecating, self-hating, self-centered one. The film is an ugly thought like “I am unlovable.” It may hurt, it may have an element of truth, it may be persistent, but it is also objectively simple and over-dramatic. Whatever self-awareness Queer has about its implicit humor doesn’t bridge the humor and the emotionality. I’m unsatisfied. I’m not devastated by the great tragic end. Maybe the emphasis on the visual language is supposed to overshadow what I saw as the true heart of the film, the performances. Maybe the actors and the director are at odds on purpose. Maybe I just need to figure it out.

Release is inductive — the film comes first, the strategy next. 

Challengers as blockbuster encouraged the viewer to accept the action as it happened. We’re the tennis ball, we’re under the court, we end on a fantastical hug in the middle of a match. The dramatic serves, the dramatic wind storm, the dramatic conversations. Sports bets determine relationships and divorces — sure. Everything is tennis. We not only accept, we indulge. You’re supposed to. It’s easy viewing.

Queer is difficult. In many ways. One can exhaust their breath to justify a film’s choices. Simply, I took the effort to watch Queer at TIFF, as thousands of others did across the festival circuit. We make up only a fraction of the total audience this film will have. We are the manufactured buzz. We set the base of understanding.

Here’s my theory, perhaps a well-understood facet of spectatorship. Trust is surrendered to the filmmaker when there is an assumption by the viewer that they are witnessing art. It isn’t a commercial work that is surrendered to the consumer’s evaluation of its entertainment value; this artwork is presented to you whole and you adjust to it by figuring it out. Its existence is self-evident. That response is created by the release strategy. If the initial release is defined by efforts to understand rather than judge — which I believe is cultivated by the presence of the cast and crew in addition to the limited and glamorized fest viewing experience — the film is later released to the open with its value self-confirmed.

Challengers presents itself with the one expectation of being worth your visit. I was willing to be part of the ride because I wasn’t questioning the film or myself. In comparison, I had to confront my criticisms of Queer with an awareness and doubt I usually reserve for Pasolini: “What I’m feeling and what I’m reading are at odds, and I can’t justify it. But if that’s how I’m responding, that’s how it was supposed to be. I just need to figure it out.” I’m not required to sweat it out. I became more involved with what the film wanted me to feel than what it really did — and that confusion came from the assumption that prestige film meaning is infallible.

Does everyone know this? Well, I like making my own proofs.

Queer seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2024

Queer out November 27, 2024 in limited theatres | Challengers out now on Amazon Prime