Post by StevePulaski on Dec 12, 2018 20:20:01 GMT -5
Love & Basketball (2000)
Directed by: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Directed by: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan.
Rating: ★★★½
Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) have had hoop dreams since they first met one another as young children. Quincy had his father (Dennis Haysbert) and his successful basketball career to look up to in his pursuit of being a top draft pick and play for the Los Angeles Clippers. Monica, on the other hand, doubted by her mother (Alfre Woodard), who wanted her daughter to be more feminine, has to fight tooth and nail to make her NBA dream come true. Showing aggression like her male counterparts gets her branded as a troublemaker by all, while Quincy's similar drive for competition and victory is seen as one of the principle reasons he's so dominant. It's a tricky dance and Monica has to learn to waltz.
Divided into four quarters, just like your average basketball game, and spanning over 13 years, Love & Basketball watches Monica and Quincy as they meet young, attend college, and grow apart and closer together over the course of their respective careers. Their first quarter follows them while they're young and is marked by an impromptu game of basketball, which ends with Quincy shoving Monica to the ground, leaving her with a permanent scar on her cheek. The next day, the two share a kiss and an undeniable romantic chemistry is set off between the two. The second quarter has them both excelling in high school, with Quincy garnering interest from college scouts while Monica's on-court aggression continues to raise questions about her character. The third character sees them in college, both at USC, commanding their games while dating yet growing more and more distant overtime. Chances to get on the court come easy for Quincy, who already hears whispers from NBA scouts while a freshman, while Monica gets an inequitable amount of playing time and must compete for a spot on an already crowded roster. Quincy also must accept some troubling news about his father; information that causes him to become impulsive and resistant to maintaining a relationship with Monica. His father, undeniably in the wrong on numerous accounts, still nonetheless tries to use whatever weight his words still have to sway Quincy from leaving college too early to chase professional ball. I'll leave the fourth quarter for you to see.
Love & Basketball may indeed be the only sports movie that cuts away from the championship game to show two former teammate-rivals-turned-friends having dinner together. But that's just one of the many surprises to be found in this sweet, endearing drama that unfortunately proves that even eighteen years after its release, we have desperately few character studies about African-Americans that don't revolve around drugs, gangs, and poverty. The film marks the writing and directing debut of Gina Prince-Bythewood, a powerful voice who textures Love & Basketball in a way we rarely see for sports films. Rather than rest much of the weight and leverage on the gravitas of a marquee win or a championship game, she paints basketball as a career; one that offers already well-off teenagers Monica and Quincy the stability offered by most full-time careers. It provides an outlet for their competitive fire, and keeps them focused on constantly bettering themselves in various facets in their lives. Few sports dramas look at the central sport with that kind of pragmatism.
Prince-Bythewood succeeds on more levels, however. She takes this great, involving story of two young athletes and interweaves an impressively complex and layered look at gender politics in athletics. By juxtaposing Quincy and Monica's rise at the collegiate and professional levels, she shows glaring polarities in the way both students are seen. Quincy's on-the-court aggression is unnoticed or hailed; Monica's is condemned and risks keeping her from the WNBA, let alone the NBA as she's always dreamed of earning a spot on the Los Angeles Lakers' roster. These double-standards aren't particularly profound to anyone who has even stopped and thought about the internal politics of professional sports, but it's still one not many sports films are willing to recognize. Prince-Bythewood not only addresses it but predicates her story on it, in a bold and genre-defying move that pays off and then some.
She's greatly assisted by a strong cast, one that fires on all cylinders and makes for a rousing ensemble. Omar Epps is an amiable presence, not to mention one who is underrated to this day, and Sanaa Lathan in a role you can't just give any young actress. In more than just pivotal emotional sequences, Lathan shows she's gripped and challenged by her character, and you can feel the fire inside her throughout this picture — a true testament to her strengths as a performer. Dennis Haysbert is also a very commanding force; we'd regard his voice and inflections about equal to the pipes of Morgan Freeman if he didn't almost exclusively use them to promote car insurance in the modern day.
Love & Basketball is a profound example of what happens when you remove the hysteria and knee-jerk overreactions from sports. You get something sweeter and more meaningful, where the depth of humanity is liable to knock you on your ass. This is a sobering and mature look at both professional sports and a deeply passionate relationship. Once again, for as many romantic films as we get in American cinema, we don't get many that are actually this romantic, and for as many sports dramas as we see, we get seldom that are this visceral.
Starring: Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan, Alfre Woodard, and Dennis Haysbert. Directed by: Gina Prince-Bythewood.