"Queen to Play" or "Joueuse" is a 2011 French film about a cleaning woman who learns to play chess and becomes obsessed by it. It stars Sandrine Bonnaire  and Oscar-winner Kevin Kline in  his first French speaking role. It's been released in the U.S. with subtitles. The subtitles are well done and easy to read, for the most part. The film played in some Art Houses in the U.S. but never received widespread distribution. The film is now available on DVD. I was able to get it from my local library, but I imagine it is available from NetFlix or Blockbuster. The film portrays chess as a means of empowerment for this passive, submissive working class French woman. It is light and contains some witty lines. It trys to be accurate in it's portrayal of chess, though there are couple of minor errors. I enjoyed the film and recommend it. I watched it with a non-chess player and she enjoyed it as well. 

My wife and I enjoyed it, too, Eddie -

http://extratorrent.com/search/?new=1&search=queen+to+play&s_cat=0

Thanks, Eddie!  I'll check it out!

I saw it a couple of months ago in the theater ... I didn't care for it much. The acting was fine, I had problems with the story-line: all of the characters display some erratic behavior, which doesn't make a lot of sense in a chess movie. Her husband's abrupt about-face about her playing chess? Please. I was disappointed.

I still think The Luzhin Defense is the best chess movie out there. Turturro is fantastic and you can't argue with a Nabokov story.

Sounds awesome

I once saw a film called The White Knight, about a man in solitary who stole a book when he was in the prison library for a short time. When he got back to his cell, he found it was a chess book, it was very interesting.

I just watched this last night.  I was searching for a chess movie online and this was one of the streaming ones available on Netflix. I was pleasantly suprised.  Parts of it were a bit far fetched, but as far as chess movies go, it holds up. 

thanks for the suggestions