Those of us who remember the events of 1973, including the tennis match between feminist Billie Jean King and chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs, see King’s triumph in the larger context of Roe v. Wade, and other advances for women. In the thoroughly enjoyable new movie, The Battle of the Sexes, filmmakers Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, the directors of the hit, Little Miss Sunshine, score big again with a delightful cast that includes Elisabeth Shue as Riggs’ icy wife and Bill Pullman as tennis promoter Jack Kramer, and a spare telling from Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay that mostly avoids historic clutter, and culminates in the match itself. Even though you know the outcome, the tennis is thrilling.

Left out are details of King’s derailed marriage to Larry King, after an affair with Marilyn Barnett that ended in a palimony suit and public outing. But the movie is sly in this way: Andrea Riseborough’s Marilyn has a quiet predatory quality. By not telling much about her, she comes off as something of an appealing and mysterious grifter.  And the cartoonish Riggs, a bombastic Steve Carell, who can proclaim women’s place in the bedroom and kitchen, is a clown from an antique world, although those egregious sentiments were “normal.” On a panel after the screening, Billie Jean King noted that while she was fighting for equal pay for women at the time, the same fight continues today.

Looking at a group of high schoolers seated in the front row at the premiere, King extolled the virtues of ambition and money-making. Women are still encouraged to please rather than speak up. Emma Stone, now 28, nearly the same age as Billie Jean King was at this pivotal time, was clearly in awe. She brings a no-nonsense earnestness to the emotions of the role, riveting to watch. The filmmakers thought of this movie at a time when our elections would be a contest between a woman candidate and a man. And just observe how the talk of bedroom and kitchen, humorous and mild, has morphed into the dark, boastful rhetoric of crotch grabbing, nearly a half century later.

Regina Weinreich

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