Game, sex, match — the return of the erotic movie

Thwump, whack, grunt, drip, smack, hit, sizzle.

Can you hear the sexual tension? It’s the baseline sound of director Luca Guadagnino’s latest movie, Challengers, setting pulses racing.

Challengers follows three tennis players on the circuit. Its saucy threesome being professional tennis champion Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), his wife, coach and former prodigy, and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), a semi-professional hustler who is Art’s estranged best friend and Tashi’s ex-lover. The action is set around a tournament in which Art is trying to rebuild his confidence after a long spell of humiliation. It builds towards the final via a series of flashbacks that chart the throuple’s complicated triangle.

Two guys, one girl. It’s a tale that’s old and so familiar. It’s Jules and Jim with sweatpants, or Gatsby with bananas. It also stars America’s current sweetheart, Zendaya, in her first role as leading lady. Now 27, the former child actor from California is being compared to Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise for her ferociously intense screen energy. The film, made for approximately $55mn, has smashed its rivals to debut at number one at the US box office.

Guadagnino specialises in lusty shots of sunbathed skin where everyone looks beautiful, the sex unabashed by feels

Guadagnino has served up the seemingly unimaginable. First, he’s made a sports film that actually works (I’ll happily discuss the others in the comments). And second, he’s made the kind of old-fashioned romantic thriller, long absent from the cinemas, in which the audience is kept in a near-constant state of arousal. Challengers is built around the thrill of a potential threesome, with homoerotic flourishes and the hope of seeing Zendaya’s boobs.

Guadagnino, an Italian director, has long been master of exploiting sexual tension: his previous films I Am Love, Call Me by Your Name and Bones and All explore the awakening of characters in relationships that transgress “normal” convention. “I love to film sex scenes,” he told the director John Waters onstage last year. “At the end of the day, my motto is that shooting a sex scene is as equal as shooting a scene in which someone drinks a cup of tea. I don’t see the difference. It’s acting.”

Challengers recalls those erotic classics that were popular through the ’80s and early ’90s — films like Body Heat and Basic Instinct that thrilled audiences with a blend of nudity, murder and raw sexual attraction. Challengers follows in the same tradition. There are no crimes here except for those abusing the laws of friendship, but it has the same echoes of lust, ambition and sexual abandon wrapped up in a thumping electronic soundtrack and JFK Jr-inspired clothes.

It’s silly, it’s superficial and it’s fabulously compelling. But audiences may be surprised to discover the sex scenes are quite chaste here. Perhaps that’s the genius of Challengers — it’s only really foreplay. You may see Zendaya in a thong, but much else is shrouded in intimacy counselling and nudity clauses that protect the actors’ modesty.

Sex on film has undergone an odd evolution in the wake of #MeToo. The rise of the actor-producer, ratings systems and the aforementioned coordinators have encouraged new dialogues about what is acceptable and what is gratuitous when it comes to cinematic lovemaking. In spite of this, recent years have seen mainstream movies in which sex is treated more explicitly: this year we’ve had Poor Things, in which Emma Stone approaches sex with an insatiable curiosity; Saltburn, a homoerotic thriller with lusty scenes of longing; and Paul Mescal performing sex acts on Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers. None were films you might want to watch next to your parents but all scored nominations for various big film awards. Even Christopher Nolan, a director who never ventures into the bedroom, was convinced to give his Oppenheimer a cheeky little tryst.

Rather than becoming more cautious about sexual intercourse, filmmakers are approaching it with gusto. But while there’s never been more sex on screen, it’s become quite grey and dull. Are we more uptight about our baser instincts? Or is it that filmmakers must curb the more prurient aspects of our nature by making it look gritty and mechanical?

Not so Guadagnino, who specialises in lusty shots of sunbathed skin where everyone looks beautiful. His sex is oily with potential and unabashed by feels. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Guadagnino feels less inhibited by the prudent studio system. He started his career in art house European films in which full-frontal nudity is considered mandatory. He was also boosted by the fact Zendaya was on board as a producer. (Is it coincidence that some of the most sexually explicit films of the past year have been directed or produced by women?) “I like to see people in their wholeness and fragility,” he said in the interview with Waters. “It’s interesting to see the nature, the naked truth of [what] we are made of.”

Challengers is fairly tame when compared with other movies. But the film is proof that the sexiest movies are those that insinuate action: like the infamous scene in which Sharon Stone uncrosses her legs in Basic Instinct, what you see is largely in the realm of the viewer’s imagination. Besides, there are few things more erotic than the sight of Josh O’Connor smirking on the baseline. Or Zendaya skirting the bedroom while applying an expensive body lotion. Slap, grunt, sweat, action: it’s been a while coming. But Challengers scores an ace in cinematic titillation.

Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen