With his latest feature, Guadagnino finally leans into his tendency towards melodrama, and the results are incredible. “Challengers” may be the filmmaker’s most widely accessible project to date, but with it, he refuses to water down his gorgeously complex view of the human condition. A script by Justin Kuritzkes adds darkly funny brutality to a tangled story of love and friendship between three tennis players (Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist), and Guadagnino brings the whole f**ked-up affair to life with a mix of style, savagery, and subtle characterization.

In the simplest of terms, “Challengers” follows an emotionally fraught rematch between two former best friends, one a professional tennis player and one a lesser competitor, 13 years after their pursuit of junior tennis champ Tashi (Zendaya) tore them apart. The movie is anything but simple, though, as it alternates flashier showdowns and blow-ups with telling moments of accidental intimacy between each configuration of partners. While most sports movies focus on who deserves the win, “Challengers” loads its players up with sins and secrets, then lets them work through their hidden shame by whacking a ball until sweat pours off them.

“Challengers” has a talented cast and stunningly structured script, but it’s Guadagnino who brings its loftier elements down to earth by focusing on the hearts, minds, and athletic bodies of these people who can’t stop making one another hurt. He tells the epic story of this trio’s magnetic attraction (and repulsion) via shared foods, slight gestures, and fumbling collisions, once again laying bare everything these characters can’t or won’t say through a distinctive, powerful visual language. Body language and physicality don’t just enrich this movie — they define it. “Challengers” is a beautifully cold melodrama shot through with the unignorable warmth of Guadagino’s vision, and it’s that contrast that makes it ultimately light up brighter than anything he’s done before.