At breaking pointe
A young dancer turns her back on the Bolshoi Ballet to study modern moves.
Training to be a top ballerina is tough. It’s even tougher if you are living in what looks like Chernobyl’s sister city and your proud dad has to find extra work on the black market to pay your tuition fees
at the Bolshoi Ballet.
Such is the start of Polina, the story of the titular Russian dancer, who, having trained from the age of four in classical ballet, feels a need to expand her artistic horizons just as she’s accepted into the prestigious Moscow company as a teenager.
Attending her first modern-dance performance, Polina decides she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life on her tiptoes. She abandons her Bolshoi plans to head to France with her boyfriend to study under contemporary choreographer Liria (Juliette Binoche)
Adapted from a French graphic novel, the debut feature by noted French modern dance choreographer Angelin Preljocaj and his director wife, Valérie Müller, certainly eschews the usual arc of movies about aspiring young dancers. Billy Elliotov this isn’t.
It’s also trying to capture something about the mental side of a physical profession and how the rigidity of classical ballet is at odds with artistic expression. It also gets across how contemporary dance’s greater freedom requires just as much dedication.
When combined with several eye-catching dance sequences – including a rigorous solo turn from Binoche – it makes this a fairly engaging and stylish arts tutorial.
But there’s a lack of cohesiveness to the storytelling, as Polina’s haphazard dance career takes her from Russia to France to a sluggish third act in Belgium.
Lead Anastasia Shevtsova is impressive in the dance sequences but is an impassive presence in much of the drama.
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