Sexism in 1970's Tennis

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (2017)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in an exhibition match, the whole world was watching (90 million TV viewers tuned in). It was a trendsetting movement, to prove that women could in fact beat men at their own game. In the case of Billie Jean King, it was tennis which is now seen as a sport that can be played by any gender. But in the early 1970's, women were seen as second-class citizens (and to some degree, they still are but that is a topic for another day) and when it came to sports, men were seen as the virile athletes who could do no wrong. "Battle of the Sexes" is a noble and often electrifying attempt to see the tennis world through women's eyes. It is not as vivid an examination as I would've hoped but it is a damn good movie, a pungent and often funny look at the sexist attitudes that pervaded our national consciousness.

Emma Stone (absolutely tremendous) is Billie Jean King, the 29-year-old Wimbledon player who is the number one female tennis player yet her salary, and that of other female tennis players, is that of a mere pittance compared with the males. Right at the start of the film, Billie Jean and World Tennis magazine founder Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman, a riot to watch) complain to sexist tour promoter Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) whose logic extends to that of men needing to support their families - women are not the breadwinners. Since their reasonable demands will not be met, Billie Jean and Gladys do not hold back as they withdraw from the Lawn Tennis Association and form their own Women’s Tennis Association, all for $1 contracts. There is support but it is the chauvinistic Riggs who is none too excited by women playing a sport he loves. He comes out of retirement to prove his worth by asking another player, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee), to play against him. Margaret falls for Riggs' proposal to play an exhibition game and loses and that is when Billie Jean decides to go to the forefront despite initially backing away from a match.

There is a lot more at stake than Billie Jean proving that her fellow sisters can take down a man. She begins having an affair with the team's hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (a striking Andrea Riseborough), but the relationship could prove detrimental to Billie Jean King's brand, her team and the sponsors. Being a lesbian in the 1970's was seen as an affront to moral decency (put rather bluntly by the religious Margaret Court). King has to make a choice to let go of her sexual identity and play the game. Will she or won't she? That is no mystery since this is all based an a true story.

"Battle of the Sexes" often juxtaposes the feminist agenda of the game with the fractured relationships flawlessly. Whether it is seeing Riggs' justifying his gambling addiction and keeping a marriage alive with his rich wife (Elisabeth Shue) and her desire to have a husband and not someone looking for the latest scheme, or Billie Jean struggling with Marilyn's love and a seemingly loveless marriage to her husband, the film never loses its footing on what matters most and what is central to its narrative - the human relationships. An early scene between Billie Jean and Marilyn where Marilyn cuts the tennis pro's hair is so intoxicatingly romantic that it pretty much stops time. It is a pivotal moment for Billie Jean - when you know something is right and true, go with it.

Shrewdly directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris ("Little Miss Sunshine"), I kinda wish more time was devoted to the politics of tennis and how these matches were organized, not to mention the legal trouble between Barnett and King and the probability that Riggs owed money to the mob, but these are relatively moot complaints. "Battle of the Sexes" also ends abruptly but that is usually the mark of a near-great movie that is so richly textured and so persuasively acted that it is impossible to dismiss on any level (for some reason, the movie was an unexplained box-office failure). Emma Stone gives a performance of rare subtlety as does Steve Carrell who exudes the energy level of an ambitious man who refuses to see that the times are a changin'. Both actors rise up to the occasion, delivering on the essence of the times when men thought they still had something to prove, and women struggled to keep proving their worth.