The story-line of this film can be summed up in just a few sentences... a young girl from a poor family in Russia follows her parent's dream and studies ballet at a local academy. Her father, a good man, does some dodgy dealing with the local mafia in order to pay for her tuition and she auditions for and receives tuition from The Bolshoi. After leaving the Bolshoi she moves to the South of France with her then boyfriend and continue their training together at a Contemporary Ballet School. She finds that the training here is different from her classical roots, despite enjoying it more, but whilst rehearsing for a production of Snow White she hurts her ankle and has to drop out. Her understudy then begins an affair with her boyfriend and her teacher tells her that she is not yet emotionally recovered to rejoin the troupe. She packs up and leaves and ends up in Antwerp. After failing a couple of auditions there and sleeping rough, trying to find work and being pushed from pillar to post, she ends up as a barmaid in a dive night club, but finds a magnetic connection with a young dance teacher and they embark upon a relationship which sees them working together on a new improvised piece in which his modern training and her classical training have much to learn from each other and the end result is something quite special. After the death of her father, she returns to Antwerp and successfully auditions for a promoter and they live their dream dancing their own choreography on stage.
The emotional journey of the film however takes much more, and cannot be summed up in any words. Like many modern European films the zeitgeist is certainly to allow the viewer long periods to reflect on what emotional state the protagonists are in as well as be manipulated cleverly through music, juxtaposition of image and location to emote the way the director wants you to. Minimal dialogue, maximum screen time. The question here though is, what effect does this have on the viewer and what impact does it have on the film's narrative flow?
Perhaps the most impressive part of the film for me was the casting of the lead role of Polina, played in her young adult form by Anastasia Shevtsova (and as a young girl at the start of the film by Veronika Zhovnytska). since the role required a multi-talented and multi-lingual ability [classically trained and contemporary biased dancer with a pleasing visage, good acting ability, and fluent in both Russian and French.] Shevtsova proved a worthy leading lady in all regards.
The directing though by Valerie Mueller is very indulgent and deliberately moody, which further slows the pace of the film down. The choreography is by co-director Anjelin Preljocaj, and if you are a dancer or a choreographer then the film should be seen for his work in this regard. Otherwise it is a hugely predictable film which falls into the same trap as many others of its ilk, in that it doesn't say anything new, it doesn't take you to places emotionally or cinematographically that we haven't been to many times before, and despite it trying to seem more 'hard' and 'grown-up' with a mafia scene and a gun, the film never really gets out of second gear the whole 100+ minutes of running time. If it's a film about a young dancer making good you want, then watch Billy Elliott; if it's a film about a rising star ballerina you want then watch Black Swan.
A rather uninspiring watch, which diverted my attention for a while but ultimately did not sustain my interest.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 23/12/18
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