#LOVE AND BASKETBALL PROFESSIONAL#

While Monica and Quincy’s love story often verges on the saccharine-even in the film’s celebrated final scene-it’s bolstered by canny contrasting of Monica’s vulnerability with her fearlessness and strength. Another scene, where the two play a game of strip basketball in a dorm room, conveys the other end of the spectrum, in which their sexual chemistry is tied directly to competition. It’s also a part of the natural ebb and flow of their careers, the failures and successes of which are inextricably entangled with how well they work as a couple. Prince-Bythewood, though, wisely positions this as not entirely connected to the double standard applied to female athletes.

He would never sacrifice basketball for their relationship, and his decision to dump her after she refuses to break curfew the night before a game shows even his implicit bias against the importance of women’s sports. Everyone, it seems, has their own misguided take on female athletes, and it’s only amongst other female ball players that Monica finds true camaraderie and understanding.Įven Quincy, who has long been Monica’s greatest cheerleader, has unrealistic and hypocritical expectations of her as a girlfriend, especially while they’re dating and playing basketball at USC at the same time. It reveals not only the deep-seated pain that Monica has kept hidden for years, but also the insecurity that’s plagued her mother, who sees her daughter’s drive and athletic goals as a rejection of her own life choices. In one of the film’s more heart-wrenching scenes, Monica, now playing ball at USC, confronts her mother for almost never showing up to watch her play growing up. And it’s when Prince-Bythewood homes in on the various hurdles and double standards that female athletes face, from the condescending way that both male athletes and other women treat them to a general lack of equal opportunity, that lends an authenticity to Love & Basketball that helps it to rise above its somewhat rote central love story. This approach offers a distinctly feminine perspective that’s all too rare in sports films. Prince-Bythewood keeps the focus more on Monica, who’s essentially a stand-in for the ball-playing director. By this point, Quincy is already coasting on his talents, while Monica is in the unfortunate position of constantly needing to prove herself, whether to potential college scouts, her opponents, or her mother (Alfre Woodard), a traditional housewife who pines for her sporty daughter to be more ladylike. The film’s second quarter picks up with Monica and Quincy in their high school years, with Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps stepping into the roles.

#LOVE AND BASKETBALL PROFESSIONAL#

It’s fitting that the cut on her cheek leaves a mark resembling a kiss since their relationship constantly fluctuates between tenderness and cutthroat competition as the two fight to turn their youthful dreams of basketball stardom into long-term success at the collegiate and professional levels. The opening quarter immediately establishes the duo’s ongoing dynamic, with the gutsy, fiercely determined Monica (Kyla Pratt) going toe to toe with the arrogant Quincy (Glenndon Chatman) in a pickup game that ends when the latter shoves her to the ground in a moment of frustration.

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball is a sentimental, sensuous tale told in four “quarters,” following two friends and off-and-on lovers, who, over the course of a decade, navigate the challenges of balancing their love lives and athletic pursuits.

Love and basketball