Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes, as true to its title and theme, is a small little positive film about a significant move against male chauvinism that governed the 70s.

The most noticeable facet about Jonathan-Valerie's third feature length directorial product was the immaculate production design! Crazy how faithful it was to the said era! For one, our protagonist Billie Jean King really belonged there! The wigs. The makeup. All spot on! From Chair for TV viewing to the muted-vibrant colour palette, everything's genuine yet nothing's overdone. When the actual photographs were flashed, you'll realize how true to T the depictions were, especially Steve Carell's uncanny resemblance to the real Bobby Riggs!

At the centre of this picture's heart, a handsome tale about romance and discovery of sexuality cemented the ground. Because when the story started, we're introduced to an exceptionally good tennis player, played wonderfully by Emma Stone, who's going through tough choices and decisions for rights equality. While the story did travel the crests and troughs in telling, which is great, it's the beginning of this intoxicating relationship between Billie Jean and Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough) that dug the content deeper. It provided another dimension for our Main Character - inside a tough woman, there's soft flesh. It gave us a solid emotional power bank to care for this persona. Towards the end, because of this relationship, Battle of the Sexes was more than just about male versus female. The scope's much larger than that! It's about breaking stereotypes. It's about changing times.

Due to this new found love, we know the hero's distracted. Her performance dropped as expected. Husband too, found out her affair. Battle of the Sexes even took place in competition for love, with a thrilling elevator scene to jack up the tension. And as she lost in love and life, it's truly sad to witness. One thing the story could have leveraged upon, in turn, benefited from was the husband and wife relationship. No scenes were available to bolster this fact, thus leaving our hearts not broken enough. Potentials for heavy confrontations were completely missed out opportunities.

On the other hand, a subplot starring the antagonist Bobby Riggs made the character human, although it's felt that the character wasn't a constant practitioner of traits written for him, both gambling and male chauvinism, with more tells and less shows. But, just like for Billie Jean, his personal life with his wife shaded a dimension too, even if we couldn't care much about him as we do the former. As a human figure representing the counter-idea, Bobby Riggs was a definite fit. With his excessive gimmicks of mockeries and disgusting ideology about women, never in a sports match you would have ever wanted an opponent to lose this bad!

Stakes were on rise at climax. Portrayal of true events like the Sugar Daddy candy and pig gift swap were hilarious. Strikes of balance were on and on! You'd cheer for the hero to win and the moment she did, her victory became ours! As she cried in the locker room, we saw all her pain come flowing out. What hardship to put a stand on!

Simon Beaufoy's writing paid attention to details, with the need for Marilyn to join the trip subtly foreshadowed. Certain characters like the managers could have been honed down for tighter concentration purposes. Steve Carell's stunt double for the tennis games was painfully obvious. Since the background music overpowered the conversation between Billy Riggs and his friends during the initial tennis-playing clip, the editing here has plenty of rooms for improvements. What's remarkable beyond all these was Linus Sandgren's cinematography skills! Interesting camera navigations, beautiful tight close-ups and masterful focus-pulling! Together with the director-pair's directing prowess, we received scenes that were expertly staged and framed!