Before
the 1980s, bisexual women were rarely depicted in Hollywood
films as three-dimensional people with ordinary human concerns;
instead, they were often defined solely by their sexuality,
which was generally portrayed as highly promiscuous.
Though a number of dykesploitation flicks in the 1970s
featured women who were “bisexual,” their love for women was
always temporary and largely done for the titillation of men—to
whom they always returned at the end of the movie.
But
a brief fling with a woman before going back to men was the
more positive side of bisexuality in films; the alternative
typically involved unnatural death. The 1968 Canadian film The Fox, which won an Oscar for Best English-Language Foreign Film, told the story of two women, Ellen
and Jill, living together at an isolated farmhouse. When Ellen falls in love with a man, Paul, events
spiral into psychological thriller mode and Paul ends up murdering
Jill.
Thus,
the theatrical debut of Personal Best in 1982 was a watershed
moment in the history of representations of bisexual women in
film. Directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert
Towne (Chinatown), Personal Best was a sports movie
about two Olympic track-and-field athletes, Chris Cahill (Mariel
Hemingway) and Tory Skinner (Patrice Donnelly), who fall
in love with each other while they are competing to be on the
U.S.
Olympic team.
Though
Chris eventually leaves Tory and falls for a man, swimmer Denny
Stites (Kenny Moore), Chris and Tory’s relationship is never
rejected as unnatural and in fact comes second to the more pressing
concerns of Olympic competition.
Personal Best was one of the first films
to depict bisexuality as relatively normal, and given the inclusion
of an unusually positive love scene—for 1982—between the two
women, the film has become one of the most memorable lesbian
films of all time.
Twenty
years after the film’s debut, actress Mariel Hemingway
told The Advocate
that her role in Personal
Best had been a particularly significant one for her.
“There was so much about the movie that colored my life,” she
said. “But what I've loved about it is that over the many years
that have gone by since then, there’s not a few months that
go by that someone doesn’t say to me, ‘I just have to tell you
that that movie helped me. It made me feel OK that I was a girl
and that I was gay.’”
But
although the film was highly popular among lesbian viewers because
it was one of the very few positive portrayals of lesbian sexuality
available, reactions from critics were more mixed, with some
reviewers noting director Robert Towne’s lingering shots of
nude bodies. Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote, Mr. Towne treats the story of the lesbian love
affair with something that passes so far beyond understanding
that it begins to look like undisguised voyeurism. Personal
Best is nonjudgmental in the way that a porn film is nonjudgmental
about the activities of its performers.”
But Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was more positive and declared, “The characters
in Personal Best seem
to be free to have real feelings. It is filled with the uncertainties,
risks, cares, and rewards of real life, and it considers its
characters’ hearts and minds, and sees their sexuality as an
expression of their true feelings for each other.”
The
year 1982, which was known at the box office for successes
such as E.T., Rocky III,
and An Officer and
a Gentleman, was a particularly notable year for films with
queer themes. Men also had their bisexual big screen splash
in the film Making Love, starring Kate Jackson (television’s Charlie’s Angels) and Harry Hamlin (L.A. Law) as the gay man who falls in love with Jackson’s
husband.
In
addition, two critically acclaimed films about cross-dressing
were released that year: In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman disguised himself
as a woman to get an acting job (and was nominated for an Oscar
for his role); and in Victor/Victoria
Julie Andrews played a male impersonator (and was also nominated
for an Oscar).
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