This is my blog so I expect no one will mind if I sometimes talk about my personal feelings a bit. No worries - it's all in connection to the film. I have a very serious love and hate relastionship with ballet. On the one hand I loved watching it as a child and I think it's stunning. On the other it's hateful - it's so ruthless, so strict. A child has to at a young age make the decision that they want to dedicate their whole life to the art. They have to work and basically give up their entire childhood doing unnatural painful things with their bodies and practice hours on end. Then it can all come crashing down when they hit puberty and their bodies change. They might never be good enough to be a ballerina no matter how hard they work - how badly they want it. Of course you can say that about other professions too I suppose.
This movie, echoes all these thoughts. The main character eventually makes it to the Big Theater in Moscow and eventually - after working her whole life gives it up, because it's not what she wants. Dancing is still her life, but she seems tired of the strict, merciless, unforgiving world of classical ballet. She goes to find herself - to find the sort of dance she can enjoy and express herself in - and to find herself.
The film is great, realistic and well-plotted. People often complain that so much that comes out of Hollywood is all the same. Well... So much of what comes out of Europe is all the same too - excruciatingly long pauses of silence and characters staring silently - the heavy tension in the air - the feeling that someone is about to get slapped or hit or raped or killed lingering constantly. Even if they don't, you expect it - the scene is quiet, the surroundings are dark, dirty, poor. A dark alleyway, an eerie subway station with homeless people on the frame, a sad grey suburb. Sure - it's realistic - but life has more colors than that, more feelings than sadness, longing, angst, confusion and grief. Even when there is happiness, it is only there to contrast the up and coming sadness, to give it more emphasis. And then there are the needlessly realistic sex scenes.
This film has all that, but it knows when to stop. Knows that at one point the audience will find the sadness too much, tiring or worse - funny because it's so over the top. It knows to lace all the dark with enough happy to make the story still seem realistic. Polina still had a pretty harsh and dark life at time, but at least you can believe that someone like her exists. And dancing - ah the dancing is beautiful. It is undoubtedly the reason to see this French-Russian-Belgium(?) masterpiece.
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