Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A Masterpiece!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Blistering performances.

"Queen to Play" is a sweet, small, powerful film about a cleaning woman's discovery of passion and dignity through chess. Sandrine Bonnaire plays Helene, a 40 something cleaning woman on the tourist island of Corsica. She's got a nice, handsome, construction worker husband, a snotty teenage daughter struggling through growing pains, an imperious boss at a resort hotel, and a quiet, reasonable, low-rent life. One day Helene picks up the game of chess, and everything changes. Chess engages her mind and passion. For the sake of learning more about the game, she does things she never would have done, otherwise. She asks a man she cleans for, Dr. Kroger (Kevin Kline) to play with her. The grouchy older man rebuffs her at first, but she offers to clean for free, and he accepts. "Do you always look at people as if your life depended on their answer to your question?" Dr. Kroger asks her. In fact Helene's life does depend on her newfound passion for chess. Helene demands time to learn about the game. She is distracted in conversations were before she might have listened more sympathetically or joined in petty, local gossip. She schedules hours alone with a man. She answers back to demanding customers at the resort. She snaps at her family, "Would it kill you to cook your own dinner for one night?" Just who does Helene think she is? She is, after all, only a cleaning woman, the chess club president reminds her. His arrogance will not serve him well when he butts up against Helene. "Queen to Play" is a small film. The script is spare. The film is lovely but not spectacular. Sandrine Bonnaire's great beauty and her performance are its best special effect. I wish there had been a bit more depth and development. But what is here is really powerful. We've gotten so used, in the US, to thinking of injustice and prejudice as being, primarily, about black versus white. "Queen to Play" shows how being a cleaning woman is itself a handicap in society, how expectations can squash a human being, and the price people pay for even the most simple gesture of coloring outside the lines of others' expectations. I admire and like Helene as I do few other film heroines. And I'd love to see Bonnaire play a saint someday. Her face is made for it.

What is it that makes a film jump off the screen and into the confines of your consciousness, implanting itself there so that years later, when you watch it again, you realize you have been thinking about it in the interim, with pleasure. It has insinuated itself into the fabric of your life and you carry its memory around with you.If film makers could work out how and why that happens, their investors would sleep more soundly at nightQueen to Play (Joueuse) is such a film.Obviously its success is anchored in Sandrine Bonnaire's performance, but there is a lot more to it than that, wonderful as it is.The writing. The direction. The cinematography. The other actors. Whatever...The scripting is unfailingly delightful. It presents the initial impetus to investigate the game of chess - a beautiful, young woman playing the game with her lover, as the driving force that compels the protagonist to visit her husband at work just to touch him, to extricate her silky nightgown, to acquire an electronic chess game under the guise of giving her husband a birthday gift. It then documents the discovery of meaning and satisfaction in exploiting whatever it is that makes a person excel at some aspect of life, and the coincidental growth of desire by her husband to share that life spirit - the initial impetus for all the chess playing that follows. I would say it is "nice" were it not for the devaluation of meaning of that word. Let's just call it an examination of compulsion, That's what the film is really all about. And Bonnaire's range of expressions and demeanors feed that camera with all the raw material it needs to hold us, the viewers, captive for the duration of the film. Compulsively so, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.Actually there is more to it than that. There is that exultation of the human spirit that comes from the process of self actualization. It is a wonderful experience just to observe it up close and personal by watching this film.Compulsiveness, Obsessiveness. They are not just the province of adolescent boys with computer games

Joueuse is one of those French films that tenderly and charminlgly warms the heart - it is beautifully made with fine acting, a measured script, never too much or too little - and it rewards the viewer.The plot of the cleaning lady who discovers chess and a mentor has strong fairytale tones: she is poor, he lives in a château but has withdrawn from the world. She has a husband who struggles to understand his wife's new found interest and growth, he struggles with human interaction. Throughout there is a nice balance around the relationships that makes sense.Above all, this is a film about discovering that the things we do for pleasure bring their own reward. The chess is very well-handled throughout the film and it makes it fun to watch.The film has heart, humour, and is nicely unmelodramatic. One of the better films I have seen recently, a pleasure to watch and simply enjoy.

I was curious to watch this movie based on IMDb's full storyline and Kevin Kline's participation, not to mention Sandrine Bonnaire's lead, an accomplished international actor I had not seen in a while. I knew to expect a somewhat slow pace because of the storyline; logically a slow pace was called for as this had to be a character development piece. Of course I was right; I'd skip that comment if I wasn't. There are a few other reviews of the movie preceding mine, all quite good as well; I'd encourage all to read them since I won't be covering the story as much as those reviews but rather how I feel about the experience.Bonnaire's character has an epiphany while watching Jennifer Beals enjoying a chess match with her friend /husband /lover; the alluring Beals, distracting a bit, got our heroine Bonnaire thinking. This was the beginning of Hélène's (role played by Bonnaire) emancipation and self discovery. The movie is the process of Hélène's journey. There's no real or poignant dramatic moment, it's not this movie's process. The movie is fluid; the flow is however like the smallest of stream and widest river, unstoppable.I so enjoyed Kline's acting, it is my favourite by him since Silverado(1985) and Trade(2007); considering his over forty something total movies, you can conclude his depiction of Kröger (role played by Kline) was perfect in my view. It's even a pleasure to hear his actual voice recite his dialogue in French. Well it's a French movie, in case you had not picked that up yet. His character, an expat living out what we believe to be the remainder of his life in Corsica, has for me a personal a very appealing romantic edge.Back to Bonnaire, she is believable in each and every scene; either the director was great at her job, Bonnaire is exceptionally intuitive or their collaboration was simply flawless. I'll go with a bit of each. Contextual details were not neglected; a subtle reference to the fact that women are a rarity at chess tournaments did not escape me. I know that from personal experience. The crowd 'Hélène' attracts at her tournament match final would have been gawking at a woman in real life as well. I liked this very well done and acted movie; I feel sorry so many will not see it or have what it takes to enjoy it.