Turning the style and sexual tension all the way up to 11, this pumped-up, tennis-themed three-way is an outrageously entertaining, typically exuberant effort from Italian director Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, Call Me By Your Name, Bones And All). It bats us back and forth across a 13-year period, following a trio of sporting stars as they fall in love and lust, and fall out.

Powered by an intense electro score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and some inspired directorial touches, Challengers introduces us to tennis pros and former best friends Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who have been unexpectedly, and very unhappily, reunited for a Challenger match, after their lives have gone in different directions.

Zendaya is Tashi, once a tennis prodigy herself. Now the wife and coach of the adoring Art, we see how Tashi’s displaced, still insatiable ambition is the driving force behind her husband’s career, while flashbacks illuminate this trio’s complicated past. If all three leads are charismatic and convincing as their characters’ older and younger selves, Zendaya steals the show here with a fierce, amusingly grumpy turn. She plays a formidable yet self-destructive woman, torn between romantic devotion and defiance.

For all its eccentric, mischievous and great fun flourishes (including thumping dance beats that amp up the drama and threaten to drown out the dialogue), Challengers is a film that feels rigorously fleshed out as it spotlights some increasingly twisted but ultimately believable relationship dynamics, with newcomer Justin Kuritzkes behind the witty and combative script. Together with visual dynamo Guadagnino, he shows how everything becomes a competition when adrenaline, animosity and envy merge with crackling sexual charge.

Challengers is in cinemas from Friday 26 April.