Love and Basketball

(New Line)

Co-produced by Spike Lee, Gina Prince-Blythewood's debut is less about the game of hoops than about the power games that women find themselves unable to avoid playing, even against their teammates. All through high school and college, basketball stars Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) follow parallel paths to unequal ends, he basking in the adoring gaze of women and autograph seekers, she playing before a handful of fans in a tiny gym. When the struggle to balance love and basketball becomes too much, Monica goes to play pro ball in Spain, where she's a complete ballplayer but not a complete person. Lathan and Epps share an on-screen synergy that makes the man-versus-woman act simultaneously humorous and painful, and Prince-Blythewood, as writer and director, uses a predominantly black cast to make a film with a message so universal it has nothing to do with being black.