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Challengers is the best thing that could happen to polyamory

16 0
02.05.2024

Much has recently been made out of polyamory in the media, to the point where the prospect of dating and ostensibly having sex with multiple people who are also attracted to you seems rather unsexy.

Pieces in outlets like the Atlantic, New Yorker, and New York Times (at least twice) have taken stabs at painting portraits of polyams that have resulted in the following takeaways: poly relationships are messy, but they will be the first ones to admit to you that they are messy; poly people believe in a lot of annoying rules, except for annoying rules about monogamy; poly people feel misunderstood but they also have their own acronym-filled language (NRE! Metamour!); polyamory is either popular or not popular at all and said contested popularity, if true, may or may not be the result of a housing crisis.

To be clear, I do not come to bury polyamory. I’m merely pointing out that all this seeming like an exhausting hassle is what happens when something humans do in their relationships becomes a media fixation. Secrets are suddenly made un-secret, and so much is lost in translation and public consumption. No one wants to write a news article that comes from a place of horniness, and with that mentality, the subject becomes a punchline.

Just when you thought that the entire idea of being communally entangled felt too examined, too picked over to ever be sexy again, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers comes swooping in. Sun-drenched and sweat-soaked, the film demystifies polyamory into something blazingly simple: being in love — physically and emotionally — with two people and being loved back can make a person as happy as they’ve ever been or ever will be.

Imagine if it was you that Josh O’Connor (right) was gesturing this to! Challengers/Amazon MGM Studios

In tennis terms, “challengers” are a type of B-list tournament, made for players in ranking purgatory — not good enough to be in the main draws of grand slam tournaments and not bad enough to be out of the game entirely. The title also has a double meaning, referencing the very complicated, emotionally difficult, and........

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