She just keeps getting better.
It’s amazing when you’re able to watch an actor or artist of any kind early in their career and track their progress as the years goes by. When you can clearly see the evolution of a performer with each project they do. Emma Stone’s career has been very much like that.
From her earlier work in comedies such as Superbad to more recent work like Birdman and her Oscar-winning performance in La La Land, Emma Stone just keeps getting better. This is even more apparent in her newest film, Battle of the Sexes.
Stone plays real-life tennis champ, Billie Jean King as she competes with serial hustler, Bobby Riggs, in a literal battle of the sexes on the tennis court in 1973. The film is based on a true story and directed by the duo behind Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
The film is a fascinating look behind the scenes of professional sports in the 70’s as well as the feminist movement of that era. King is forced out of the tennis association after deciding she wouldn’t compete in a tournament that offered men 8x the prize money than it offered women.
Billie Jean King was a pioneer in sports and for feminism (she also became the first female athlete to be awarded the Prseidential Medal of Freedom.) And while the behind-the-scenes look at this infamous match is fascinating, the real draw of this film comes from King’s first real relationship with a woman (a wonderful Andrea Riseborough), how this obviously affects her marriage, and how huge being a gay athlete (or gay at all, for that matter) was in the 1970’s.
The story alone is fascinating enough, however Dayton and Faris don’t do much out of the ordinary to make the film seem something special. It’s incredibly moving at moments and hilarious at others (Steve Carrell is perfectly cast as Bobby Riggs) but because of the amount of films being released this year and the fact this film doesn’t take any particularly unique way of looking at the story, Battle of the Sexes may just have to be content with doing well commercially and not necessarily on the awards front.
That is, except for Emma Stone. She almost assuredly will be in the awards conversation at the end of this year. Her performance is the heart and soul of this film- heartbreaking and inspiring. Without her, this film would probably come and go without anyone blinking an eye. I can’t wait to see what she does next because she really is churning out remarkable work film after film.
Awards Prospects: Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction
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