'Queen to Play' makes good moves

For such a serious, sedentary pastime, chess has a rather hotblooded movie history, and an eclectic one: the emotional journey of "Searching for Bobby Fischer"; the giant, warring rank and file of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"; the flirtatious gambits of "The Thomas Crown Affair."

The game provides easy metaphors, never less so than in "Queen to Play," writer-director Caroline Bottaro's perhaps too-obvious story of Helene (Sandrine Bonnaire), a wife and mother who makes her living on the island of Corsica as a hotel maid and housecleaner and seems, well, a bit pinched. Or precise. Either way, unhappy.

But one morning, when she watches a beautiful hotel guest (Jennifer Beals) playing and beating her boyfriend on the terrace of their room, something in Helene clicks, and chess becomes her obsession. That Helen would have an awakening is no surprise -- she's ripe for it. But that chess would provide the bugle call is a rather original idea, and both Bottaro and Bonnaire make it utterly plausible: Helene has the intensity and focus to be a prodigy. She just needs someone to cultivate her talents.

Enter Dr. Kroger (Kevin Kline, in French), a reclusive and rather ill-tempered widower who has hired Helene to clean his house, and instead becomes her chess mentor. This rankles Helene's lumpen husband, Ange (Francis Renaud), and sets the whole village chattering, but the relationship between the two chess-

infatuated principals is limited to the board -- when Kroger puts the moves on her, it's simply to take her rook.

"Queen to Play" employs some obvious strategies in getting to its endgame. But the performances keep the viewer in play.