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Challengers is filled with details like that, people and places that may not matter to the drama but are integral to dropping us into a world that feels authentic and joyful. Joyful because Guadagnino’s delight in them is contagious; you can feel his affection for every cheap hotel and country club tennis court and all of the unimportant people whose lives are built around them. There are a lot of wonderful, trashy American locations in this movie and every one of them Guadagnino films as if it were a beautiful villa somewhere in Northern Italy.

And you always get the sense that they love what they’re doing, leaning deep into their material and capturing it with a cinematic verve that is often unexpected but never pretentious. Even when I feel totally lost to the plot of Guadagnino’s Suspiria, I can feel his love for the theatricality of Tilda Swinton’s old age makeup or the fountaining blood pumps that end the film.