Playing For Keeps: Love & Basketball (2000)
“You jump in some guy’s face, talk smack and get a pat on your ass, but because I’m a female I get told to calm down and act like a lady. I’M A BALL PLAYER! OK?”
Eleven years ago - a time when MTV played music videos, I remember watching ‘MTV Base’ and shaking my head each time a promo for writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball popped up.
Is this a romance or sports movie? Is that the worst film title ever? I asked myself.
Eleven years on, the film is certified as a modern classic of African-American romance and I can just about live with the title.
As a cocky basketball-mad eleven-year-old, Quincy McCall is mesmerised by girl-next-door Monica Wright’s dynamic ability on the court. This is how the love story begins in Love and Basketball as “Q” and Monica come of age in a leafy suburban street in early 80s Los Angeles, California.
The grown up protagonists were excellently played by ladies favourite Omar Epps and the gorgeous Sanaa Lathan.
Quincy’s affluent family unit owes much to the glittering career of his retiring basketball superstar father, Zeke McCall, played by the ultra-smooth Dennis Haysbert.
Monica’s mother (Alfre Woodard) is a stately housewife, who from the start is disapproving of her daughter “running around like a boy”. Her failure to understand and respect Monica’s basketball talent and ambition has strained their mother-daughter relationship.
Similarly, Monica’s father holds a respectable position at a bank and attempts to gently usher his daughter away from basketball and toward “exploring other options”.
On the contrary, Monica is determined to become “the first woman ever to enter the NBA” whilst Quincy is naturally driven by the need to live up to/ better the accomplishments of his father, a former star for the Los Angeles Clippers.
Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film is clearly told from a woman filmmaker’s perspective. This is essentially Monica’s story and whilst Omar Epps’ Quincy is afforded significant screen time, he is certainly of secondary importance.
Like a basketball game, Love & Basketball is divided into "quarters", with each segment chronicling a different period in Monica and Quincy's lives. The first quarter, set in 1981, details their meeting and brief relationship as an 11-year old "couple."
The second quarter fast forwards seven years to high school, where both Monica and Quincy are excelling. However, the film highlights sexual politics/imbalance in sport when it materialises that Quincy’s future is bright whilst Monica’s is uncertain. When it comes to choosing a college, she has to wait anxiously to hear from a recruiter while he plans a press conference to announce his choice. Such painful imbalances threaten to affect their relationship and make for an intriguing plot.
Quarter #3 unravels during the pair's freshman year at college, when she faces pressure from a demanding coach and he struggles with a bombshell regarding his famous father’s extra-marital affairs. Such elements take a huge toll on the childhood friends/young couple and they eventually separate.
Finally, in the fourth quarter, the film shows the degree to which Monica and Quincy's dreams are realised both on and off the court.
Love and Basketball illustrated how young girls are equally passionate and ambitious in what might be considered a male-dominated sporting universe. To this end, the film also highlighted the blunt reality that girls have more to ‘overcome’ (e.g. avoiding pregnancy, stereotyping, social prejudice, family disapproval) to succeed at the highest level of professional sport.
Erm... *Spoiler Alert*
The conclusion of Love & Basketball is fairly predictable as the question of will-they-won’t-they? is decided by (yep you guessed it) a game of one-on-one basketball. Stylised and sexually charged, a primarily young black female audience were swept away by this sentimental ‘end-game’.
Over a decade later, young females irrespective of race are still in love with Love and Basketball. The film with the dodgy title can be found on many a Facebook 'favourite film' list from London to Los Angeles.
Monica’s courage in going after what she wants is paramount to her success and happiness on and off the court. This is the lasting message of the film. It is Monica who challenges the perception of what girl’s can and cannot do and it is Monica who challenges Quincy to a match to “win his heart”.
Whilst Love & Basketball was an African-American romance picture by 'default', the combination of the boy-meets-girl paradigm and basketball trope meant it was ‘universal’ in its scope. More specifically, the film managed to avoid being pigeonholed as a just another 'black film' via its high production values, vast publicity and adoption of sport as a 'universal' language and metaphor.
Such factors heavily contributed to the film grossing nearly $30 million at the box-office, and today resembling one of the most beloved American romance pictures of the new millennium.
