Zendaya's tennis love triangle is impressive straight down the line

Challengers, MA15+, 130 minutes, four stars

Sometimes a banana is just a banana, but not in Challengers. Homoeroticism is not just a subtext here - it's blatant. Bringing to the surface what's often unspoken in sports and movies, the film depicts a complicated love triangle in a sports milieu: tennis isn't the only game being played here.

The story jumps around in time but we're kept abreast of the time frames so it's not too hard to keep track of the action. Patrick (Josh O'Connor) and Art (Mike Faist), inseparable best friends since they were kids, are young men on the verge of becoming professional tennis players when something - or rather someone - comes between them.

At a party, they meet prodigiously talented player Tashi (Zendaya) and both are smitten. They compete for her affections, good-naturedly at first, but then more seriously, and she encourages their attentions while protesting more than once she doesn't want to be a "homewrecker". That might be intended as a joke, but there's enough said and shown to suggest there's more than a little truth to it.

"Tennis is a relationship," Tashi says - and in this movie, the game and the three players are intertwined in more than one way.

Patrick wins the battle, but Art seemingly wins the war, ending up married to and having a child with Tashi who, after a career-ending injury has become his coach. Art does well, winning major titles, but then comes a slump.

Meanwhile, Patrick struggles - sleeping in his car at one point - but still has his pride and his talent and desire to win. And he hasn't forgotten about Art and Tashi. If you've guessed there will be a climactic confrontation on the court, you'd be right, and while all this might seem to give away a lot, it's no more than what's in the trailers and there's much more going on than that.

Playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes wrote the original screenplay and, having made Call Me By Your Name, director Luca Guadagnino knows more than something about depicting homoeroticism, though the story and dynamics are different here. Challengers is much flashier than that earlier film, with slow motion, extreme closeups, even shots from the point of view of a tennis ball in motion. There's quite a lot of tennis footage but it's imaginatively shot and made part of the drama. The closeups of hot, sweaty heads and bodies and limbs add to the febrile atmosphere.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Oscar winners for Soul and The Social Network, provide a pulsating, sometimes overly loud and repetitive, score. The movie is long but keeps the attention.

Although it's set in the US with American characters, the film has a bit of a European feeling with its ambiguities and subtleties alongside the more overt elements. Although there's a lot of sexual tension, there's not much in the way of sex.

With the movie almost entirely focused on the three leads, the performances need to be good, and they are. Zendaya, O'Connor and Faist are obviously well beyond their teenage years, different hairstyles being the main marker to differentiate the past from more recent times. But we're used to seeing overage adolescents in movies and TV and the acting makes up for any niggles. Faist brings out Art's decency but also something a little less admirable, while O'Connor as the somewhat seedier Patrick seems like he might be the one missing the old times the most. And Zendaya is very effective at portraying the different sides of Tashi: the competitor, the flirt, the manipulator and the frustrated professional. At one point she does a grinning "Kubrick stare" and the effect is unsettling.

Challengers is welcome as an absorbing, thought-provoking adult drama, not something to be taken for granted nowadays.