Product Description

Two female runners fall in love while training for the 1980 Olympics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27713 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-01-08
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 128 minutes

Features

• This directorial debut of Chinatown Oscar winner Robert Towne is a bracing celebration of athletes who live the way they play: with total passion. Mariel Hemingway plays a promising hurdler who finds needed emotional and athletic seasoning with a caring mentor (Patrice Donnelly). After the two fall in love, their relationship is threatened as both vie for a spot on the U. S. Olympic team.Personal

Amazon.com
It takes a lot to win. This movie is usually considered a classic of lesbian cinema, and that's too bad: its true sensuality lies in powerful erotic associations with running and the sheer pain of competition. The film opens with a memorable close-up of sweat dripping on tarmac, an early glimpse of a visual style which evolves throughout the picture into almost pornographic slow-motion sequences of high jumps, shot puts, and running legs.

The story follows a young runner (Mariel Hemingway) from a clueless start in the 1976 Olympic trials through a vexed affair with her mentor-competitor (Olympic runner Patrice Donnelly) to a final, triumphant qualifying race for the boycotted 1980 Moscow games. The human elements are told in an almost documentary style, giving an honest, complicated look at the blossoming of friendship into love against the near-military backdrop of world-class competitive sports. Hemingway and Donnelly can act, and their drive to win is compelling, both on the field and in their personal lives. But what really makes the film worth watching are the races--stunning images, beautiful editing, and the timeless drama of athletic endeavor. --Grant Balfour

Customer Reviews

Exceptional film; one to be enjoyed over and over!
Whether you viewed this film when it first appeared in the '80s or today, you cannot help but get the feeling that you are right there w/Tory (Patrice Donnelly) & Chris (Mariel Hemingway) competing on the track and struggling through the pains of high level competition. The technical advice given this film is marvelous, thanks in part to co-star Patrice Donnelly.

Also, the attraction between the two stars is touching and their ensuing love scenes are gentle and moving. When the two stars struggle in their 3yr long relationship, you (the viewer) struggle right along with them. Unfortunately, the two stars never address the reason for their breakup and one is left w/a feeling of incompleteness.

Scott Glenn is very convincing as the coach who falls in love w/Tory and becomes the number one jerk to keep Tory & Chris apart.

All time favorite "jock" movie
So, I'm having a party conversation with a lesbian friend and "Personal Best" comes up. She denounces it as a lousy portrayal of lesbianism. Yeah, I answer, but it is a great sports movie! And it is too. Personal Best is not just a great sports movie, but is also a great bildungsroman ("coming of age" movie). In it the lead character, Chris Cahill (Mariel Hemingway) is involved in a dysfunctional relationship with her father who is a coach. We see little of her family life. The movie revolves around her moving to a new family and getting new parents: Tory Skinner (Patrice Donnelly) and Terry Tingloff (Scott Glenn, who is, you guessed it, a coach). The problem is the tranference of parental relations is confused from the very beginning by a sexual relation between Chris and Tory. The waters are muddled even further when jealousy rears his head between the "parents," and between Tory and Chris who are set in competition against each other by Tingloff. Through it all, Chris grows up so that, when Tingloff comes on to her in a vulnerable situation, she staves him off (unlike Tory in a earlier scene) and begins to develop her own relationships and her own philosophy of competition. The moral of the movie is: To be competitive you don't have to be better than everybody else, just a little bit better than you were yesterday. You don't have to kill the competition, you can love the competition, but always remember, you are the competition.

Sports and love between two women touch your heart.
This is a film about competition in sports and about the love/sexual atraction between two women. The scenes that capture the more difficult moments in sports competition (the beginning of a 1000 meters, by example)are really good and beautiful. There you can see the high feelings of people that dedicates theirs lifes to win in a sport campus. Otherwise, the love scenes are delicate and very beautiful. You can feel by yourself the feelings between the two women. High feelings. What I really didn't like is the end of the love story. It is not credible and seems to be moralizing. But you have to see this picture. Great photography, great bodies. I saw it when it was new (1983, 1984, I guess) and I saw it now and I find it better than then.