![]() She doesn't have defining characteristics. It's not clear what is missing in her, although teachers and choreographers sense it. These are all wonderful scenes, although Polina-and her life-remain a cipher. Muller and Preljocaj allows us to see how a dancer thinks and sees: human bodies moving through space, and the displacement of air that creates. Polina sees dance everywhere: girls in bars, a rapturous hug in a subway tunnel, the grasping body of a homeless man. There's a breathless scene where they improvise a pas de deux along the river in Antwerp, their bodies black against the vivid winter sunset. At one point, she pairs up with Jeremie Belingard, a beautiful dancer with a kind humorous face. This journey takes her from Russia, to France, to Antwerp. The film's narrative is a mosaic, a Girl in Search of a Dance Company. One of the most memorable scenes is an overhead shot of a tutu-ed ballerina dancing an entire sequence, her white costume stark against the black floor and black curtains. There are exhilarating moments when the camera is still: a closeup of Polina's feet in toe shoes, up on pointe, and down: the convex shapes her feet make. Lechaptois lets us see the dancer's bodies in full, with no trickery via editing. So many current dance movies are cut in a music video style, forgetting that part of the beauty of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' dances (to give just one example) stemmed from the fact that they were filmed in full-body shots, the camera gliding with the duo. But there are formal moments, where Lechaptois pulls back and lets us see the dance unfold in full, with no cuts. The dance classes are a flurry of arms, necks, legs, feet. Much of the film is shot in intimate handheld style by cinematographer Georges Lechaptois. Her gaze is assessing, sometimes merciless, a gaze from which Polina cannot hide. Liria says to Polina, "My work is about longing." Binoche, in a casual sweat suit, is believable as a dancer, as well as a woman with a unique vision. Juliette Binoche plays the choreographer, Liria Elsaj, whose dance style is heavy, "grounded," filled with plunges into the floor, very different from the rising-up illusion of effortlessness required by ballet. Impulsively, Polina follows her boyfriend to France to audition for a famous choreographer's company. The two go to a modern dance recital, and Polina is rocked to the core by the passionate intimacy expressed between the dancers onstage. (The film's score is by 79D, suggestive of Polina's yearning to be free of her ballet training.)Īnastasia Shevtsova (a dancer with the Saint Petersburg Mariinsky Theater) plays Polina as a teenager, accepted into the legendary Bolshoi Ballet, and dating a visiting French dancer, played by Niels Schneider. Walking home from class by herself in the twilight, Polina lets loose, music seguing from classical piano into a thrumming club beat as she dances wildly, her boots kicking up snow, a scene prophetic of things to come. Polina lives at home with her parents, who have pinned all of their hopes on their daughter rising through the ranks of the most competitive ballet culture in the world. The students' ability to focus, to push through pain, to endure criticism, is adult in nature. Now, he watches over his child students with a sharp eye, pushing their backs in, yanking their legs higher, a perfectionist. His choreography had been too political for the Soviet era, and he has suffered the consequences. Polina (Veronika Zhovnytska) is first seen as a little girl, tramping through the snow in the shadow of a belching nuclear power plant in the industrial outskirts of Moscow to her ballet school run by an exacting teacher named Bojinsky ( Aleksey Guskov). The diverse world of dance and the pursuit itself: that's what "Polina" is about. As a non-dancer but dance enthusiast, I was thrilled to these beautifully shot dance scenes, each unique in its own way. Since every single scene includes dance in some way (either in class, or out in the world), the ship stays upright the majority of the time. When it strays into the personal life of its lead, it moves almost compulsively into cliche. When "Polina" stays focused on dance, it soars. "Polina," based on the graphic novel by Bastien Vives, focuses on the nitty-gritty of life as a dancer: sweaty classrooms, pianist in the corner, bleeding feet, intimidating teachers, the sheer pressure of a pursuit so rigorous that "making it" barely exists.
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