I was up until 2am last night because one of my pay TV movie channels was screening Personal Best. I don't own it on DVD and I never miss a chance to see it when it comes on TV. It looks old, but it never grows old for me. The themes are as universal today as they ever were, and for a lesbian movie I am still awed by how progressive this one was.

When I was a student athlete life seemed a heck of a lot simpler, and yet more complicated at the same time. It always seemed like I had so many more things to worry about than the rest of my schoolmates. The more I achieved the more I was expected to achieve, and being in an individual sport (track and field) rather than a team sport didn't help.

Sure, you had training partners and friends in the sport, but the people closest to you were just as likely to be rivals come time for the competition. Team sports teach camaraderie, individual sports teach almost nothing but the desire to win. If you met good friends or lovers it was almost in spite of the competition, certainly not because of it.

It's easy to relate to Chris Cahill (Mariel,Hemingway) and her constant reluctance to put her personal ambitions above those of the people she cares about. First it is her father, then Tory, then Terry her manipulative coach. By the end of the film she somehow manages to untangle the web of who really deserves her loyalty and affection and acts on it.

Mariel Hemingway does an excellent job at portraying Chris's inner conflict - that desire to succeed weighed against the need to feel loved, and to love in return. Hemingway's performance here is not unlike her Academy Award nominated turn as Tracy in Woody Allen's Manhattan. Both characters seem naive at first, but after a while we realise that their reserves of strength and dignity go deep. When threatened, they respond with anger. When loved, they respond with passion. When hurt, they aren't afraid to show tears. If you allow yourself to be sucked in by surface impressions the end result will surprise you, and that's half the fun.

While not exactly a happy ending, the way the love story is wrapped up in Personal Best feels real, and right. It was perhaps too much to ever expect the passion of Chris and Tory's relationship would survive either their own competitiveness and the interference of a jealous, sadistic coach. When Tory exclaims "You have no idea how hurt I am", and Chris replies "I know exactly how hurt you are", we're told everything we need to know about the long-lasting effects of their relationship. Neither of these young women are naive, except perhaps when it comes to dealing with the fallout from these kinds of emotions. Both understand how important their relationship was.

I think it's important to us, the audience, that they know it. Too many lesbian relationships in film and TV get casually swept aside, as if their pain doesn't count simply because they're gay, and gay people are portrayed as promiscuous by nature, always ready to move on to new people in a heartbeat. Not only is it important that gay cinema show lesbians falling in love, we also need to see them realistically breaking up and falling out of love. Three-dimensional characterisation is so rare, especially for lesbian characters.

As openly bisexual actress Patrice Donnelly herself said in an interview with the Advocate in 1998:

"I feel so proud to have played Tory. In a way, she was the first realistic lesbian character ever on the screen. There were lesbians in movies before, but this was the first time that being lesbian didn't look like a disease. Personal Best showed us as good, wholesome, clean human beings who pursue excellence. It showed being a lesbian is not about deviance but about love."

Personal Best is about love. Of all kinds. The love of a woman, of a man, of a sport, of an ambition, of family, of mentors, of friends.

In the end Chris couldn't take the frustration and the pressure that Tory's jealousy and insecurities placed on her. Her injury is merely the final straw, not the cause of their breakup. Tory allows her jealousy of Chris on the field to cloud her judgement, and then allows grief over losing Chris to almost destroy her athletic career. In the final scenes where Chris sacrifices her personal ambition and plays the numbers of the pentathlon for Tory's benefit it is an act of love that means more to them both than any sexual act ever could. It's clear they'll never be just friends, but they can't continue to deny they mean nothing to each other. It's a new beginning for them, not an ending.

The sports announcer says before the credits roll that all the trials these women have gone through are for nothing. They have striven for Olympic selection in a year where the USA would not attend the Olympics, the 1980 Moscow boycott. That just goes to emphasise that the decision Chris made was the right one. She chose to be a friend rather than a competitor, and the implications of that choice will clearly last long after the memory of that last race is gone.

Got a comment? Write to me at nancyamazon@gmail.com