Unique, lovely, and important – but maybe one thing could be improved.
Gina Prince-Bythewood has written and directed a unique, lovely and important romantic drama, with its own imagery of intimacy. I first saw this two decades after its release, but I’m sure the scene of childhood friends-then-lovers Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) icing eachother’s muscles after their respective basketball games has since become iconic.
Lathan and Epps are both so charismatic (I mean good Lord, the entire cast is beautiful), and the gendered experiences Monica and Quincy experience in their respective careers and lives are interesting to follow. While the film’s ending perhaps feels inevitable, almost every step of the journey is earned by side-stepping clichés in setting and delivery… until that finale. Not to Nando v Movies this film, but I just wish that the filmmakers had done one thing differently.
As expected, the two children grow up as friends and then become lovers; then, as with young love, they grow apart. But this is a movie, and so they need to somehow end up together.
The “somehow”, I feel, is where the fantastic Love & Basketball (ahem) drops the ball.
Had Monica broken up with Quincy, in order to pursue her own basketball career, and everything played out exactly the same, culminating in her same line – “Basketball isn’t fun anymore without you” – then that would signify that she’s learned and grown, and so that line would have real weight. Quincy would then have a reason to take her back – now he could admit he’d only “moved on” because he had no choice, she was gone. But as it is: Quincy dumped Monica, and she (rightly) moved on with her own life – so what is she fighting for?
Further Viewing
Gabrielle Union, who plays Shawnee, originally auditioned for the lead role of Monica. Despite being a basketballer in real life, she recalls how Gina Prince-Bythewood didn’t see her for it: “’You don’t look like an athlete’ — which I was my whole life — ‘but you do give me hoe vibes.’” The oral history of Love & Basketball, from Union, Prince-Bythewood, Sanaa Lathan, Alfre Woodard, Tyra Banks and others, 20 years on (via Los Angeles Times):
… and it’s beautiful to see how the bond that was formed between Prince-Bythewood, Union, and Lathan looks, 20 years later (via Vanity Fair):
More from director Gina Price-Bythewood: promising romance Beyond the Lights (2014)…
… and affecting fantasy The Old Guard ():