Good sports biopics give a unique glimpse into the wider context of a significant chapter in an athlete or team’s history (Remember the Titans) and usually incorporate an exhilarating style of cinematography that thrusts you into the game (42). Sports biopics are like braids that weave together individual threads of personal narrative, social commentary, and the history of a sport. If one strand of the braid is compromised, the braid breaks. Battle of the Sexes attempts to weave together a significant strand of Tennis legend Billie Jean King’s life and the struggle for women’s equality in America during the 70s, but in the end proves to be a compromised braid.
The film begins just after King’s career milestone victory at the 1972 U.S. Open. Her moment of triumph, however, is truncated by the United States Lawn Tennis Association’s decision to make the prize money for women championship tournaments significantly lower than the men’s tournaments, eight times less to be exact. King’s demand for equal pay for women is met with patronizing empathy and no promise for things to change for Women’s tennis. In response, King and a group of other women tennis players audaciously found their own tennis league, setting the larger plot of Billie Jean King’s story into motion.
As the newly found Women’s Tennis Association gains traction, it catches the eye of retired tennis champion and serial hustler, Bobby Riggs, who sees the ultimate gig in challenging the best of the WTA in a winner-take-all tennis match. Riggs initially reaches out to King describing the wager as the ultimate tennis match, “The chauvinist pig versus the hairy legged feminist – the Battle of the Sexes!” King finds the challenge unflattering and is more interested in the hairdresser, Marylyn Barnett, who came to one of her matches.
The film’s plot, like King herself, becomes engrossed in this affair, foregrounding King’s exploration into her sexuality. King’s athletic career, Rigg’s convoluted familial life, and the game of tennis in general take a back seat. When King’s career takes a sudden dive, however, she brings the game of tennis and the fight for women’s equality back into the limelight, brusquely putting aside all other parts of her life. Subsequently King takes Riggs up on his offer and prepares for the most anticipated sporting event in sports history. Despite the poor development of supporting characters and the muted role of the actual game of tennis throughout the film, the dynamic use of archival footage and the engaging choreographed tennis match made for a satisfying climax.
While comical and, at times, socially poignant, Battle of the Sexes remains a poorly woven sports biopic. Most of the film felt like a battle of sexualities as the film centralizes King’s extramarital relationship with Marilyn. Their relationship is stylistically accentuated in a way no other aspect or theme in the film is. Billie Jean King and Marilyn’s first interaction is shot in beautiful extreme close ups. Accompanying this scene is a harmonious ebb and flow of dialogue and music. Here, the film’s sounds enrapture audiences in King’s romantic infatuation. Their subsequent interactions are inundated with tender, character development moments and thoughtfully composed shots which we don’t see anywhere else in the film. We really don’t even see King play tennis until after Marilyn is firmly rooted in King’s life—about halfway through the film—and at this point I was more invested in their relationship than the game of tennis. And with no substantial treatment of the other characters, it became all the more difficult to invest myself in the overarching narrative it.
As the title of the film suggests, gender relations and equality for women were inextricably tied to the events leading up to and including the match between King and Riggs. Yet it’s difficult to feel the societal stakes of the plot when the oppositional ideology of gender inequality is so caricatured in Riggs’ character. Also, with the imbalance of thematic focus in the film, audiences might miss the systemic, unjust reality of gender inequalities. The film barely manages to weave together the essential strands of a sports biopic; it’s a three-chord strand that easily breaks when you consider the social freight the film attempts to carry.
You might also find these reviews of Battle of the Sexes helpful: