Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. This week, Kayla is up talking about 2017’s Battle of the Sexes, starring Emma Stone as tennis icon Billie Jean King.

When I say I wish the movie Battle of the Sexes were, well, sexier, I’m talking about the tennis, not the sex.

And, okay, not sexier exactly. I understand why co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris would avoid over-sexualizing a film about the women fighting for their space in professional tennis, women who end up being sexualized, belittled, and dismissed by the men around them. What I really mean is I wish there were more eroticism in the film, especially when it comes to the tennis. The kind of erotics Melissa Febos writes about in her essay on watching WNBA games. The kind of erotics present in the best tennis film ever made, Challengers.

Battle of the Sexes and Challengers are very different films, but they share the basic concept of a tennis love triangle. In both, two characters are in love with the same woman, and that woman loves tennis more than she could ever love either of them. In Challengers, Tashi Duncan has all the power. In Battle of the Sexes, real-life tennis legend Billie Jean King, played by Emma Stone, does. Then there’s her husband, Larry, which the film thankfully never positions as a bad guy but rather one just saddened when he realizes he can’t be what his wife needs or wants. And there’s Marilyn, hairdresser-turned-lover, the first person to invite Billie Jean into her own queerness as the two begin an affair while on the tournament road.

Battle of the Sexes is more or less a traditional sports film, so the fact that it’s centered on an openly queer tennis player and doesn’t gloss over or minimize that part of her life is a welcome surprise. Sports films are often heteronormative; sports are, too. Billie Jean King fought hard for women in sports, and the film celebrates her feminism without obscuring her queerness. That’s no small thing.

But while the film is suffused with intimacy and alluring visuals throughout, that goes away the second someone picks up a tennis racquet. Tennis in the film is lifeless, dull, lacks any of the urgency and forcefulness of the scenes when Billie Jean is off the court advocating for her right to play. Stone is great casting in these other scenes. On the court, she’s less convincing. There’s something missing. Billie Jean was a force on the court and off it, but Battle of the Sexes doesn’t quite harness the former even as it succeeds with the latter. It’s difficult, of course to accurately capture sports in film. Do the actors’ movements in Challengers always look exactly like real players? No. But where they lack in technique, they more than make up for in energy and spirit, the electricity and erotics of tennis jumping off the screen. Battle of the Sexes falters in the sports part of the sports movie.

I’m supposed to be writing about the sex scene though, not the tennis scenes. But as Tashi Duncan puts it, tennis is a relationship. Challengers deftly reveals tennis is about so much more than the game itself. Seeing it in IMAX, I could practically feel the players sweat on me in its final minutes. That’s hot.

And yes, the real life “Battle of the Sexes” match between Riggs vs. King was steeped in pageantry and theatrics, and the film does capture that. But it wasn’t just some goofy spectacle. It was a real tennis match. Billie Jean showed up and treated it as such, and she won in straight sets. Whether you know the true story or not, you know what’s going to happen in the match before it begins, but that’s not what makes the film’s final act boring. It’s that lack of erotics, that lack of treating the game itself as if it were just as compelling as the conflict and context around it.

In a similar way, the sex scene in Battle of the Sexes doesn’t thrum with the same electricity as the haircutting scenes. The film is bookended by two instances of Marilyn cutting Billie Jean’s hair, first when they meet and the chemistry crackles instantly, and again right before the big match. Here, haircutting becomes not only a form of intimacy between the women but also a metaphor for Billie Jean King coming into herself and taking more control of her image and career while others attempt to take away her power. Marilyn helps Billie Jean become her truest self. But Marilyn’s hands in Billie Jean’s hair don’t just signify closeness and intimacy; it’s hot. It’s erotic.

The sex scene itself is fine. The fact it’s included at all in this kind of film does feel like a feat in and of itself, so I don’t feel compelled to complain. The camera stays close to their faces, effectively communicating just how transcendent this is for Billie Jean, whose pleasure is palpable. They’re interrupted before much happens.

But as much as I do enjoy that a sports movie has a sweet lesbian love story tucked inside it, I also can’t help but think of the sugarcoating required of this telling of Billie Jean and Marilyn’s story, which in reality was quite fraught and tragic. Their real life dynamics are perhaps too complex for this kind of movie to tackle without making it a main focus, but there’s a part of me who wonders if Battle of the Sexes could have gone from good movie to great by being a bit more biting, a bit more gritty in its portrayal of both this relationship but also the sport of tennis itself.

The film opens with Billie Jean playing tennis, shot in low frame rate so that her movements are blurred and choppy. In some ways, it’s an interesting aesthetic choice. But it’s almost like we’re not given an opportunity to really see her in action, to let our eyes fully focus on her movements. It’s a softening of the sport of tennis. Not every tennis movie can be like Challengers, and tennis has changed a lot since the 70s when Battle of the Sexes is set. But I promise you tennis is a lot hotter and harder than it’s made to look in Battle of the Sexes, and the film finds unexpected places to supercharge with erotics and chemistry, like in a hair salon, so it’s shame it doesn’t match that on the court.

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