QUEEN TO PLAY

Sandrine Bonnaire, Kevin Kline, Francis Renaud, Jennifer Beals, Valérie Lagrange

Kevin Kline and Sandrine Bonnaire shine in this sophisticated comedy from Caroline Bottaro, a scenario beguilingly set on the island of Corsica. When Hélène (the luminous Bonnaire), a humble hotel worker at an up-scale resort perched above the Mediterranean, espies a couple locked in the throes of a passionate chess session (featuring a cameo from Jennifer Beals), her interest in the game is inflamed. Unfortunately, her husband has little interest in learning any new moves. Increasingly obsessed, Hélène spots a chess board in the home of Dr. Kröger (Kevin Kline in his first entirely French role), a scruffily patrician American recluse for whom she cleans house, and badgers him till he agrees to teach her the fundamentals. As the pair battle with knights, rooks, kings and queens, the erotic draw of good gamesmanship soon evolves. On a whim Hélène enters a local tournament, but will her newly discovered zest for chess disrupt her life, or launch her into heady new territory? Bonnaire and Kline positively shine as complex, intelligent characters. This is a film that lovingly celebrates the life of the mind.

"The character's trajectory might have tilted toward whimsy with a less assured interpretation than Sandrine Bonnaire's, but the thesp's slow transformation--from hard-working wife and mother to fey creature of complex strategies and secret smiles - proves riveting, for both the audience and her fictional mentor..." - Variety