Lead by an impressive Emma Stone, ‘Battle’ puts positive spin on King-Riggs showdown

Emma Stone continues to impress. After her Oscar-winning work in last year’s “La La Land,” she’s back with an even stronger performance in “Battle of the Sexes,” playing tennis great Billie Jean King.

“Battle,” directed by the husband-and-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (“Little Miss Sunshine”) dramatizes the 1973 stunt match that pitted King against Bobby Riggs (played by Steve Carell) and became a cultural sensation.

A TV audience of 90 million watched as male chauvinist piggery was bested by emergent feminism, and the world of sports and the world at large were never the same ever after.

As King, Stone brings an endearing natural warmth of personality to her portrayal along with an underlying steeliness befitting a woman who dared much to champion the fight for women’s equality in a male-dominated world.

Her warmth and sensitivity are best displayed in a remarkable early scene where King falls instantly in love with a young hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough).

Words are few, but it’s all there in the eyes and smiles of the two women (Riseborough is also a standout here) seen in tight two-shots exquisitely filmed and edited.

At a time when same-sex relationships, particularly in sports, were deeply hidden, this quiet dawning realization on King’s part on the true nature of her sexuality is a powerful defining moment in the movie.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”) treats virtually every character with great sympathy, not least Riggs.

The man is a shameless self-promoter, inveterate gambler and genuine tennis talent (he won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1939), and Carell plays him with great zest. His chauvinist piggery was largely a put-on, the movie argues, a quick path back to the limelight he craved and that had eluded him since his glory years on the court.

His challenge to the 29-year-old King, one of the top female players in the world, puts Riggs — age 55 and long retired — at the center of a media-induced frenzy that he milks for all it’s worth.

His relationship with his wife (Elisabeth Shue) is fraught, and a scene in which she sorrowfully but firmly informs him their marriage is over because of his wayward ways is another high point of the movie.

King’s relationship with her husband Larry (Austin Stowell) is handled with great delicacy in quiet scenes in which he struggles to come to terms with his wife’s gradually revealed sexual orientation.

In real life, King and Barnett eventually divorced, and in later years Barnett filed a landmark palimony suit against King, outing her and severely damaging her career.

That’s not alluded to in the movie’s relentlessly positive handling of the “Battle of the Sexes.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Lead by an impressive Emma Stone, ‘Battle’ puts positive spin on King-Riggs showdown."