Filmmaker scores with `Basketball'

Filmmaker scores with `Basketball'

"Love and Basketball" (New Line Cinema) rates as a three pointer. The winning story of childhood sweethearts both of whom passionately love playing basketball was written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.

This young African American film-maker deserves a big grandstand cheer for bringing to the screen a story where decency matters.

Every detail is made to count in this beautifully constructed film. Take for instance Monica and Quincy's first encounter. He's shooting baskets with some of his 11-year-old buddies when a lanky, new neighbor their same age, Monica, asks to join the game. They scoff to think a girl could be any good at basketball but her outstanding ability at the game soon earns their admiration.

She also wins little Q's affections as well. Soon, he asks her to be his girlfriend, a relationship that lasts about a minute when he tries to order the feisty little girl around. Their scuffle produces a scar on her face.

In later scenes the camera will offer a glimpse of that mark at moments where their adult relationship is in turmoil too.

Prince-Bythewood offers this sort of touch to her story subtly but in a way that draws the audience deeply in.

The main thrust of the story follows their individual dreams of playing professional basketball but as significantly "Love and Basketball" is also about important relationships in their lives, especially Quincy with his father and Monica with her mother. These relationships become as fraught with emotion for the moviegoer as is the sweet romance of the two youngsters we see grow up.

Always our interest is perked by the way their basketball careers progress.

We're more accustomed to watching the way young men leap from the high school floor to scholarships to college and sometimes even a bid from the pros. So Monica's heartfelt desire to be a pro and the lengths she goes to achieve her dream exert even a greater fascination on us.

Interestingly, it is her stubborn unwillingness to give in even in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles that most endears her to us. This tomboy is as sweet a young girl as the screen has given us in a long time.

A generally superior cast give intense performances, certainly Omar Epps as Q gives a star turn, but the passions of Monica, her mother, and Q's father are the most involving.

A hero to his son, Q's dad, a pro ball player, is sensitively delineated by Dennis Haysbert as a man who adores his son and to that degree wants to be a good family man, but on the sly accepts the sexual favors of young women who flock to his door when he is on the road. All the while he advises his son, a rising star in basketball, to stay away from such temptations. Haysbert manages to give a strong performance of a weak man.

The remarkable Alfre Woodard, one of Hollywood's most powerful actresses, portrays a mother devoted to her daughter, Monica, but leary of her child's obsession with basketball. Mother and daughter often fail to communicate well but have a deep emotional attachment, all of which is evident through Woodard's exquisite performance.

Last, but certainly not least, there is the theatrically experienced Sanaa Lathan who gives the high strung Monica every drop of heartfelt concentration that a young athlete with dreams of being the best at her game would have. Seldom do you see a character mature before your eyes during a film story but Lathan subtly portrays the tender story of how Monica grows into womanhood.

Of interest to Bostonians, Lathan is the daughter of Stan Lathan, who arrived here in the Sixties to act in Bryant Rollins' stage play "Riot" and stayed on as a cameraman and director of 'GBH-TV's black community show "Say Brother."

Photo (Two young people playing basketball)