Luca Guadagnino has long explored the way our sexy human bodies drive us to madness, whether it’s a steamy countryside romance, the horror of an elite ballet academy, or the insatiable hunger for human flesh that motivates a cross-country road trip. With Challengers, he transports us into the inner psychological warfare of the most dangerous game of all: men’s profession tennis.

Bertrand Bonello’s century-spanning tryptic is nothing if not inventive, but it’s sometimes hard to find the emotion in the high aesthetics. But if you give yourself over to it, you come to realize that maybe the chilly gulf is exactly the point of this stylish filmmaking exercise that melds science fiction and humane mysticism. Whether it’s in any given moment or spanning across time, its interlocking stories confront the impossibility of making deep simultaneous connections.