Or 'wet T-shirt' movie?

Sports movie?

Was it a sports movie? A lesbian movie? Or soft porn for straight men? The critics (gay and straight) were divided in their response to this movie about the on and off-field relationship between two female athletes.

On the one hand, the way the relationship developed between the two female leads was felt to be credible. The lovemaking scenes were considered to be realistic rather than sensationalist. And sports fans felt that the shots of athletes in competition were particularly artistic.

On the other, the story line was still a re-hash of the familiar old theme of ‘straight girl led astray then redeemed when the right man came along’. By the end of the movie Mariel Hemingway, the younger of the two women, goes off with a male water polo player, demonstrating that the lesbian bit was just a phase.

And the winner is...

And not everyone saw the on-field shots as artistic. One critic (a straight man, interestingly enough) complained that the camera seemed obsessed with the crotches of female athletes as they Fosbury flopped over the high jump.

So, was it a lesbian film, a sports film or soft porn for straight men? Irrespective of what the producers may have had in mind, the marketers made their target audience clear when they added “Featured in the April issue of Playboy” to the promotional material.

This focus is even more obvious when one compares Personal Best with another ‘gay’ film released in the same year – Making Love. Making Love was a movie about two men falling in love and the sex scenes were very tame (almost to the point of non-existence). Nonetheless, the producers felt it necessary to post an advance warning to the audience that they may be shocked by the content.

Filling in time until Mr Right arrives

The women’s sex scenes in Personal Best were far more explicit than those in Making Love yet no such warning was posted. Straight men may have shuffled in their seats at the sight of two men getting a little intimate but as for the sight of two women doing the same – well, that’s what they came to see wasn’t it?