[Editor’s note: The following article contains some spoilers for “Challengers.”]
“Then the lights go out and it’s just the three of us / You me and all that stuff we’re so scared of”
By the time Luca Guadagnino’s sexy, thrilling “Challengers” sticks two of its leads in — of all places — a suburban Applebee’s, we have a sense of where this is all going.
Built around a love triangle, Guadagnino’s latest stars Zendaya as once-in-a-generation tennis prodigy Tashi, who gets entangled (both personally and professionally) with the sparky Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and his more focused BFF Art (Mike Faist). Told in a nonlinear fashion, the film volleys back and forth between time and place, always coming to rest on a key 2019 match between Patrick and Art.
While screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes’ original script contains plenty of twists, turns, and revelations, the film starts in a place where we soon learn Tashi is retired, she’s married to Art (who she also coaches), Art is a major star, Patrick has burned out, and the three of them long ago fell out.
The hows and the whys are important — and are unspooled throughout the film’s complex timeline — but there’s a distinct pleasure in seeing what is revealed when and by whom. Enter: Applebee’s.
This is not a location that screams romance, but it’s ostensibly where Art and Tashi’s latent love story really gets trucking. They’re about a decade into their friendship, Tashi and Patrick have already been together and broken up, Tashi’s knee (and career) have been thrashed, and Art has attempted to keep a steady course (both in tennis and in playing the long game to win Tashi’s heart). They’re enjoying a meal together, just the two of them. In the background, a Bruce Springsteen song plays.
The scene might feel relatively small, but it’s essential. (It’s also, funnily enough, pulled directly from a 2014 New York Times story about Cincinnati Masters players flocking to a local Ohio Applebee’s; a picture of two romantically involved tennis players included in the story is even framed exactly like Art and Tashi are when the scene opens.) Sharp-eared listeners (and devoted Bruce fans) will hear his 1987 hit “Tunnel of Love” playing distantly in the background, an odd choice for the playlist of a suburban fast-casual chain in the mid-aughts.
Much of “Challengers” plays out to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ thumping original score, so outliers are interesting. “Tunnel of Love” is not the only non-Reznor and Ross track that appears in the film — during an early party in which Tashi interacts with Art and Patrick, she dances to Nelly’s “Hot in Herre”; when Patrick goes to visit Stanford in the middle of the film, Blu Cantrell’s breakup anthem “Hit ‘Em up Style” plays before Tashi and Patrick have it out, for instance — but it sticks out because of how different it is than the rest of the film’s pulsating score and upbeat soundtrack.
It’s a love song, yes, but more than that, it’s a song about how hard it is to keep love going, especially when there are outside forces at the door. It’s the kind of song that would only play during an Art-and-Tashi scene, never a Patrick-and-Tashi scene.
Tashi and Art have always been more adult in their interactions with each other, at least versus when one or both of them is with the more high-spirited Patrick, but this conversation marks a change. The content of their conversation is mature, and it’s also the first conversation we’ve seen between the characters after they’ve graduated college (at least, if we break the film down to a linear structure). They’re not kids anymore.
Art is trying to get Tashi to coach him. Tashi is still trying to find her place in the tennis world. Art tells Tashi he’s proud of her. Tashi asks if he’s still in love with her. Yes, it’s a conversation in an Applebee’s, but it’s also a conversation that is about to serve as the entry point to their adult lives.
What’s most fascinating are the points in which Art and Tashi stop speaking, when Springsteen’s song and its lyrics are unmistakably clear, when we’re meant to believe that Art and Tashi are hearing them, too.
The first quiet point: “Then the lights go out and it’s just the three of us / You me and all that stuff we’re so scared of / Gotta ride down baby into this tunnel of love.” Might as well rename Patrick “All That Stuff We’re So Scared of.”
The second quiet point: “It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough / Man meets woman and they fall in love / But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough.” After they finish their meal and their conversation, Art and Tashi head out to the parking lot, where they finally kiss — just the two of them! no more Patrick! — and enter into a new period of their lives, together.
You don’t need to know much about the period of Springsteen’s life that he chronicles with the song to get the gist: Love is hard. “Tunnel of Love” is the title track off The Boss’ eighth studio album (for real wonks, the album is not an E Street Band joint, though members of the group do appear on it) and is widely hailed as one of his more insular works. It’s also an album about how challenging it is to stay in love when you’re young and probably a bit stupid. The album was released in October 1987. One year later, Springsteen’s first wife, Julianne Phillips, filed for divorce.
What happens to Art and Tashi when “Challengers” ends? Look to the song’s final line, and the one we don’t actually hear in “Challengers”: “And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above / If you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love.”
An Amazon/MGM release, “Challengers” is now in theaters.
