Challengers: Zendaya’s new movie is a pulse-pounding instant classic.

The tennis match that begins, ends, and provides the central narrative framework for Challengers, the vibrant new film from director Luca Guadagnino at first strikes the viewer as implausibly high-stakes for a match at a shabby New Rochelle, New York, tournament called the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger. The other man on the court, Patrick Zweig, is Art’s estranged best friend since childhood, a brilliant but undisciplined player who has spent the past decade on the fringes of the pro tennis world, getting by winning small tournaments against far less talented opponents. “I’d let her fuck me with a tennis racket,” mutters horndog Patrick when he sees Tashi on the court for the first time. Guadagnino’s weaving of eroticism into the everyday physicality of high-level athletic training brings to mind earlier cinematic depictions of the way romance and sports can combine, films like Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 directorial debut Love and Basketball, Ron Shelton’s 1988 love-triangle baseball classic Bull Durham, or the 1982 Robert Towne drama Personal Best, a lesbian love story set in the world of track and field.