On Demand Weekly

Read our review from a few weeks ago.

THE EXTRA MAN

http://ondemandweekly.com/blog/article/the_extra_man_-_on_demand/

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: QUEEN TO PLAY (Zeitgest Films).

QUEEN TO PLAY (JOUEUSE)
A feminist fairy tale with powerhouse performances….
By Cynthia Kane

QUEEN TO PLAY (also known by its original French title JOUEUSE, meaning the “player”) is an effervescent tale about regaining something that’s special in life. After seeing it for the first time, I kept thinking by simply switching “y” for the “u”, JOUEUSE would become JOYEUSE, meaning “joyful” or “joyous” in the feminine form in the French language, which also made a lot of sense to me – there’s a joyous sense of play and finding the lost self in this film. The player, Héléne (Sandrine Bonnaire) finds enormous joy in learning to play chess, in challenging her mind, in finding a part of herself long locked away, in discovering a friend and mentor in the American Dr. Kröger (Kevin Kline).

With lesser known actors, this still would have been a delightful, thoughtfully subtle ruse on middle-age and “it’s never too late”, but screenwriter/director Caroline Bottaro, in her feature film début, smartly cast Sandrine Bonnaire (INTIMATE STRANGERS, LA CÉRÉMONIE, MONSIEUR HIRE, VAGABOND are probably best known to a U.S. audience) and Kevin Kline (A FISH CALLED WANDA, THE ICE STORM, DESPERATELY MAYBE)– in his first French-speaking role – which would serve to draw a bigger and an international audience.

Based on the novel, “La Joueuse d’echecs” by German writer, Bertina Henrichs, QUEEN TO PLAY tells a story about Héléne, a femme de ménage, in other words, a maid, who works at a local upscale hotel in a Corsican village and who takes on other cleaning jobs, such as the villa of Dr. Kröger, an American, living virtually as a “shut-in” since the suicide of his wife some years before.

One morning as Héléne cleans the room of a middle-aged, yet vibrant American couple (cameos by Jennifer Beals and Dominic Gould), she spies them in a seductively played game of chess on the terrace and becomes intrigued. Something clicks. Does she see it as a dynamic she’s lost over the years with her husband, Ange (Francis Renaud), a handsome construction worker she moved to Corsica to be with? Does she see it as an intellectual stimulation she’s lost touch with living her quiet life she chose in this remote and beautiful place? We’ll never quite know, but palpable and brilliant performer Sandrine Bonnaire makes you consider all these things as we take the journey with her.