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. 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. 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 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. 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.
Prince-Bythewood keeps the focus more on Monica, who’s essentially a stand-in for the ball-playing director. This approach offers a distinctly feminine perspective that’s all too rare in sports films. 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.
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. 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. 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.
Even 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. 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.
Prince-Bythewood, though, wisely positions this as not entirely connected to the double standard applied to female athletes. 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. 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.
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. Even in her lowest moments and greatest sense of insecurity in her love life, she’s unwavering in her resolve to chase after her professional dreams. And it’s this tension between her strength and fallibility that makes her an unusual protagonist in the genre—a role model, certainly, but one who at every turn is achingly human.
Image/Sound
Love & Basketball is, for the most part, a bright, evenly lit film and Criterion’s transfer of a new 4K restoration really captures all the details visible throughout the frame. And whether it’s the yellows of the basketball uniforms or the cooler blues in the high school dance scene, the colors are rich and vibrant while retaining the film’s typically naturalistic look, particularly in the skin tones. The 5.1 audio is even more impressive, with strong separation of sounds that make the many basketball scenes throughout the film all the more immersive.
Extras
This disc is absolutely stacked with a wide array of extras, starting with two commentary tracks recorded in 2000 when the film was released. In the first, director Gina Prince-Bythewood and actress Sanaa Lathan get on like old friends as they recall the lengthy and contentious casting process that caused the two women to doubt one another’s talents until late in the rehearsal process. It’s not the most in depth of commentaries, but their enthusiasm for the film and each other is infectious. The second track features Prince-Bythewood, editor Terilyn A. Shropshire, and composer Terence Blanchard, with the trio really getting into the nuts and bolts of the filmmaking process, including how certain scenes were built, where cuts were made, and how and why Blanchard’s score was inserted where it was.
Prince-Bythewood and Lathan appear together again on a new 40-minute making-of feature, along with other cast and crew members, all of whom fondly recall their time on set and address the enduring legacy of the film, particularly among younger generations of basketball players. A new conversation between Prince-Bythewood, writer-producer-actor Lena Waithe, and WNBA Hall of Famer Sheryl Swoopes further touches on the film’s accurate portrayal of female athletes in an era when women’s sports weren’t taken seriously.
Prince-Bythewood and Shropshire are interviewed again for a featurette that covers the collaborative nature of their editing process, and they both provide commentaries for the deleted scenes that are also included on the disc. Two of the director’s earlier short films—her 1991 UCLA thesis film Stitches, and Progress from 1997—are also included, along with a brief introduction. The disc is rounded out with excerpts of some of the audition tapes and a fold-out booklet with an essay by author Roxane Gay, who discusses all of the wonderfully subtle details in Love & Basketball that make the film one of her favorites.
Overall
Gina Prince-Bythewood’s intimate 2000 drama gets a snappy new transfer and a virtual cornucopia of fantastic extras courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
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