David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Josh O'Connor’

Challengers

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist

Running Time: 2 hours and 11 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

To sustain a 2 hour film with just three characters in it is no mean feat. In fact Italian director Luca Gudagnino manages to maintain the pace in his latest youth obsessed film about hot young tennis stars in his new film Challengers starring Zendaya (Dune), Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist (West Side Story).

Set mainly in New Rachelle, New York and containing some flashback scenes in Atlanta, Challengers centres on a sexy ménage a trois between childhood tennis stars Art Donaldson played by Faist and Patrick Zweig superbly played by British actor Josh O’Connor (Mothering Sunday) and the formidably talented and hard edged young American tennis star Tashi Duncan wonderfully played by Zendaya.

Auteur director Luca Gudagnino makes Zendaya the centre of this stylishly aggressive sports love drama as Tashi expertly manipulates the two young men in her life as she comes between their friendship, marries one while deceiving the other.

Challengers is as much about competitive rivalry on the tennis court as it is about lust and manipulation. Zendaya acts brilliantly in a film in which her two male co-stars compliment her stylish aggression and her complex personality that makes up the tennis star Tashi Duncan.

While the location of Challengers could have been more glamourous, it really is the acting that elevates Challengers particularly from Zendaya and Josh O’Connor who plays a McEnroe type down on his luck aspiring tennis star with swagger, cockiness and charm. Josh O’Connor has the acting skills and he is beginning to be noticed as film star to watch. He is riveting in this film.

Challengers is constructed as a tennis match – the entire film follows the match between Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig at the New Rachelle Challengers match in New York in the summer of 2019, with multiple flashbacks to earlier times in the complex relationship between the three main characters, which involves deception, manipulation and seduction.

There are some utterly superb scenes particularly the car park scene in Atlanta with a blustery gale blowing across the city as Patrick and Tashi argue about their relationship amidst a mixture of desire and animosity.

Challengers is a fascinating character study about sports stars and their ambitions. A niche sports drama about tennis in which the players talk the same language.

My one main issue with the film was the bizarre soundtrack by Oscar winning sound duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network) which was techno music combined with some more sultry tunes. It wasn’t the music so much as the use of it particularly blurring out dialogue in certain pivotal scenes. The film’s original score should add to the narrative and not distract the viewers.

Challengers is a glossy, stylized film about tennis and once again Luca Guadagnino’s director’s gaze focuses on the follies and decadence of youth, not to mention the beauty and the betrayal. Like in his Oscar winning film Call Me By Your Name, the Italian director makes another stylized film about youth but without a brilliantly written screenplay by James Ivory.

Aimed at fans of Zendaya, Challengers gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that enjoy tennis films like Wimbledon and Match Point.

Mothering Sunday

Director: Eva Husson

Cast: Odessa Young, Josh O’Connor, Oscar winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), Oscar winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite), Oscar winner Glenda Jackson (Women in Love, A Touch of Class), Patsy Ferran, Emma D’Arcy, Caroline Harker, Emily Woof, Sope Dirisu, Craig Crosbie, Simon Shepherd

Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

In a similar tone to director Joe Wright’s film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, French director Eva Husson boldly adapts acclaimed British author Graham Swift’s 2016 period romance novel Mothering Sunday to the big screen featuring some startlingly fresh and candid performances by Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor as the ill-fated lovers.

Rising star Josh O’Connor best known for his portrayal of the young Prince Charles in the Netflix series The Crown plays the only surviving son Paul Sheringham, a wealthy aristocrat who has an explicit affair with the house maid of his parents’ best friends The Nivens, wonderfully played respectively by Oscar winners Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Olivia Colman (The Favourite).

The nubile and unconventional housemaid in question is the beautiful Jane Fairchild, gorgeously played by the Australian actress Odessa Young.

Set almost entirely on a beautiful Spring day on the 30^th March 1924, Jane Fairchild takes advantage of her liberty and commits to an illicit liaison with Paul Sheringham at his family estate before he is meant to meet his parents and future fiancée Emma Hobday played by Emma D’Arcy for a lavish lunch. Much of the film takes place during this gorgeous day as Paul and Jane spend a forbidden and passionate morning together while some of Paul’s stuffy family members and friends are expecting his arrival at a very elegant lunch at Henley on Thames.

Mothering Sunday is a French take on how they view the British upper classes and director Eva Husson beautifully uses the young lovers in all their nudity to expose the decay of the rigid class lines that used to keep the British class system intact, which began unravelling spectacularly between the two World Wars.

Without the moral depth or psychological complexity of Atonement, Mothering Sunday is a stunning and sensual period film about forbidden love and the journey one young woman takes to becoming a writing, her courage to change her accepted place in society and evolve from being a housemaid to eventually becoming a famous writer.

At the end of the film the central character is seen in contemporary times and Jane Fairchild as a mature and established writer is portrayed by 1970’s Oscar winner and screen legend Glenda Jackson (A Touch of Class, Women in Love) as she ruminates thoughtfully on her success at becoming a famous writer while looking back on that one fateful encounter with a posh young man which would change her life and inspire her creative genius.

Mothering Sunday is a languid British period film which is drawn out in parts but equally provocative.

Held together by a top calibre supporting cast, Mothering Sunday gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is worth seeing especially for the central performances by the two young and talented stars: Josh O’Connor and Odessa Young.