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Monday, April 4, 2011
MOVIE REVIEW
Queen To Play (Joueuse)
The Move Is Yours To
Checkmate
Sandrine Bonnaire as Hélène in "Queen To Play (Joueuse)",
directed by Caroline Bottaro.
Zeitgeist Films
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Monday,
April 4, 2011
The drama "Queen To Play (Joueuse)" opened in the U.S. over the weekend at
select cinemas including the Laemmle Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.
Made in 2009, Caroline Bottaro's feature film-directing debut
stars Sandrine Bonnaire as Hélène, a woman in France moderately unhappy
in her marriage.
With a teenage daughter and a husband working at a job where morale is low,
Hélène cleans at a hotel to keep a roof over the head of her working class
family. She sees a couple playing chess on a balcony as she cleans their
room. The couple (Jennifer Beals and Dominic Gould) are very much in love.
This image strikes and intrigues Hélène. She purchases a chess set.
Before long she begins to play. One of her cleaning clients, a sheltered
widower named Dr. Kröger (Kevin Kline), reluctantly teaches her chess.
Ms. Bonnaire's film is a warm, inviting mix of a romance of the mind with class
and sex politics. Easily enjoyable, "Queen To Play" examines the role
intellect and assumption plays in a woman's life. Both are intertwined
here, sometimes to haunting effect as Hélène searches in quiet desperation for
an intellectual and emotional connection in her life. Hélène doesn't cheat
on her spouse, she merely cheats on the expectations of the gossipy, cynical
society around her, a society that says she must stay in her place and not seek
to ascend beyond it.
"Queen To Play" shows that class isn't all about the books you read or the
knowledge you acquire, but about the pride and pursuit of dreams and opening
yourself to a world of possibilities beyond a boxed-in existence. Love,
respect and betterment, Ms. Bonnaire suggests, can exist within and without the
trappings of an occupation. Dr. Kröger's isolation, self-imposed after the
passing of the love of his life leaves him a hollow man, though faintly
reignited by the unyielding enthusiasm of a woman he otherwise barely notices.
The themes Ms. Bonnaire presents are hardly new, and the film is predictable.
We know where the film will end up soon after the 40-minute mark. Yet the
film, based on Bertina Henrich's novel La Joueuse d'echec (The Chess
Player), presents chess as a metaphor for upward mobility and the trappings of
sex. One of the film's characters declares that "chess is not a woman's
game", but the most important and powerful piece on a chess board is the queen.
Mr. Kline, speaking French for the first time since "A Fish Called Wanda", is
wonderfully amusing as Dr. Kröger, who tutors Hélène on a weekly basis as she
cleans his home. Dr. Kröger has buried himself in his books, barely
venturing outside. He has apparently hidden his own acknowledgment of his
late wife's talents. We discover other things about him, though thankfully
the film doesn't play them up to unduly manipulate its audience. Dr.
Kröger's bitterness and pain over his wife's departure is wrapped in a
patronizing and condescending attitude toward Hélène.
Ms. Bonnaire is great as Hélène, bringing passion and a delicately nuanced
performance to the big screen. Her intellect and smart approach to
portraying Hélène as a beautiful, cerebral person resonates with the viewer.
Mr. Kline and Ms. Bonnaire are an oddly-suited pair in their roles: as if,
strangely, a crusty old cheeseburger met a fresh bagel. Both characters in
the film are hungry however, but for very different reasons.
As a big chess fan and player -- Bobby Fischer would have run Saturn rings
around this wee high school chess team member -- I enjoyed this film's fresh,
inventive integration of the game with its lead character's aspirations to learn
and master it and the larger game of life between the sexes. It's a
difficult endeavor to portray chess as a character cinematically -- few films
have done it well -- and though chess is featured prominently it is not the main
focus of the film as much as more general themes of life are.
To that end, "Queen To Play" showcases chess not as a suspenseful or dry ritual
but as a facilitation of a greater understanding of the dance between the sexes
and possession of the variables implicated in that game. The looks and
glances of men who play against Hélène reveal all one needs to know about
expectations and assumptions. Sometimes seductive other times sardonic,
"Queen To Play" is an intimate, entertaining charmer. Checkmate!
With: Francis Renaud, Valérie Lagrange, Alexandra Gentil, Alice Pol, Elisabeth
Vitali.
"Queen To Play" (Joueuse) is not rated by the Motion Picture Association of
America. The film is in French with English subtitles, with brief spoken
English. The film's duration is one hour and 36 minutes. The film
will expand its release over the next few weeks across the U.S.
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