Personal Best

"Personal Best" opens with a beautiful shot: a lone spot of sweat on the cement as the camera pans slowly upwards to Mariel Hemingway's tense profile as she prepares for a race. Soon afterward, however, the actress opens her mouth and out comes this little girl voice with a puny range. It's only natural to think this is going to be a tough role for Hemingway to pull off, but I believe she has done it. Gay-themed dramas are always something of a risk for the actors involved, yet Hemingway takes her sprinting character from naive mouse to sexy girlfriend to adult in the course of "Personal Best" and becomes a better, stronger actress in the process. Although an excessively barbed film with two gratuitous sub-plots (both involving men: a manipulative coach and an eleventh-hour boyfriend for Mariel), the picture has great '70s atmosphere, good race scenes, some funny, raunchy humor, and an even-handed, focused look at two women in love (lesbian lover Patrice Donnelly is a very moody cuss, but that's certainly no reason to drag in the boyfriend, which is where the movie starts hedging its bets). Two-hours-plus of Mariel Hemingway may sound like too much, but she's very good here; she carries most of this film on her shoulders and pulls off some very tricky sequences. This was her own 'personal best'. ** from ****