What does that gesture that leads to sexual explosion mean?

Personal skill, competitiveness in an elite sport and jealousy intertwine with love and sexual dynamics between the main characters, who thus live a passionate three-way romance from their youth until the final match in which much more than a title. We analyze the impetuous outcome of Rivals.

‘Rivals’: the tie break, explained

Cinemania

Rivals It starts and ends with the final of the Challenger tournament between Art and Patrick, in an agonizing, sweaty and tension-filled last set. There are many things at stake: victory, but also a sports career, a friendship and even a marriage.

Art starts as a favorite in a match that is decided by the best of three sets. His professional career supports it, but he has never managed to beat Patrick. Let’s remember that Patrick won his first date with Tashi after beating his friend in the final of the US Junior Open.

Art and Patrick share the first two sets while the film explains to us that Art wants to retire and that this final could cost him his marriage. By the time we reached the third set, the score could not be more even, reaching 5-6. Patrick has to hold his serve and win the game if he doesn’t want to lose the match.

At this point, we also know that Tashi and Patrick slept together the night before. The protagonist meets with her ex to ask her to let herself win in the final and thus save Art’s career and, in the process, her marriage. Everything indicates that Patrick is going to obey Tashi and give up that game, but, just when he is about to do so, with the score at 30-40, he abandons his characteristic serve with the racket touching his back and, in his place, place the ball in the throat of the racket.

This traditional serve has meaning for both friends: at the beginning of the film, when Patrick and Art are teenagers and the former has just had his first date with Tashi, Art asks him if they have slept together; He doesn’t need to pronounce it, he just has to confirm it by putting the ball in the throat of the racket when serving. By using this serve again in the Challenger final, Patrick reveals to Art that he has slept with his wife.

Art, visibly pissed off, gives the game away to Patrick with a “Fuck you” that earns him a penalty point. We reach the tie break, with Art, apparently fed up and angry, throwing a serve that goes straight to Patrick’s head. However, on his second serve, the blonde abandons himself to the uncontrolled competitiveness that Tashi always wanted to see in him.

He and Patrick engage in a long, grueling, violent bout, which ends with Art jumping to smash his former friend. Due to the force of the momentum, the tennis player falls over the net and falls on Patrick. The point ends with both of them on the court, hugging and sweating, while Tashi, standing in the stands, shouts: “Let’s go!”

The next thing we see are the closing credits of Rivals. We don’t know who wins the game. We don’t know who Tashi chooses, if he does. But all that matters little: Art has regained his confidence, Patrick has returned to play against his best friend and Tashi has gotten ‘his boys’ to exploit their potential and has relived with them his golden years as a tennis prodigy. The three have met again.

At the beginning of the film, Tashi explained to the protagonists that the purest form of tennis is two people on the court sharing a moment of sublime physical excellence. They’re not competing, they’re telling a story. This orgasmic finale is just that: a three-way match loaded with sweat, exhaustion, desire and reunion.

‘Rivals’: meaning of the ending

In statements to EW, O’Connor has referred to the film’s outcome. “At the end of the film, they have met again,” he said: “They have been looking for a way, and they have done it terribly wrong, to satisfy the need, the hunger they feel for others. And they try to find the way in different ways. “.

“For Art, maybe it’s leaving tennis and being with his family, reconnecting with his wife,” the actor continued: “For Tashi, it’s finding the satisfaction in tennis that he lost when his career came to a standstill. For Patrick , it’s also finding that sense of flow that I had when I played tennis with Art when I was young, or when I watched Tashi play tennis when I was young.”

For O’Connor, the moment in which Patrick reveals to Art that his wife has cheated on him is when they finally all meet again: “In the end, despite the crazy way he behaves, Patrick realizes that he has both of us there, he forgets about everyone and thinks: ‘I know how to get him to a place that satisfies me, him and her, we’re going to have that.’

“It’s that ‘Shit’, but then happiness,” O’Connor added, before revealing that one of his favorite moments in Rivals is his character’s mocking smile after the revealing serve: “I thought, ‘Please use the shot where Mike smiles back because if it’s just me, I look like a psychopath.’ So I smile and Art notices, in plan: ‘I’m furious, but, oh, yeah.’

Guadagnino has also referred to this final scene, stating that it closes the circle after the intimate sequence in which the protagonists kiss in a hotel. “They are representing for 13 years the possibility of return to that hotel room to rediscover that precious moment of growing desires and innocence,” states the director: “And, at the same time, to feel comfortable with each other as when they were there. Throughout the entire arc, this is what they try to achieve. And, in the end, with the rivalry at the highest level, the “Triangle finally sits in the same place, but now on the track.”