“Isadora’s Children”: variations on sorrow
For much of the 20th century, the tumultuous life of American dancer Isadora Duncan has been so abundantly explored in middle- to- highbrow pop culture that her work seems overshadowed by movies and miniseries about the tragedies that befell her. “Isadora’s Children,” directed by Damien Manivel, uses both Duncan’s work and her life as a starting point, but emphasizes the work.
On- screen text explains that, after the horrific death of her two children and their governess in an automobile accident in 1913, Duncan choreographed a solo dance of loss titled “The Mother.”
Manivel shot his film, set in the present day, in a nearly square aspect ratio, the better to compose neat, focused frames with. He begins with a young French dancer ( Agathe Bonitzer) discovering and researching “The Mother.”
“This will be my first dance since the accident,” she says in voice- over. We’re not told more about the accident, or her life. She’s shown in bed with a man who’s presumably her boyfriend, but we get only a suggestion of his presence. Manivel isolates this nameless woman and her obsession: Through her study and rehearsal, the contemporary dancer imagines Duncan and reconstructs her.
The movie, while essentially linear in structure — onscreen titles label the dates of the action — also feels musical, with the pauses created when the dates appear functioning as “rests” in a score.
The movie’s theme is stated with its first character; then a variation, a relay of sorts, shifts the action to a more rural French setting, where two women, the older one a teacher and director ( Marika Rizzi), the younger one a dancer ( Manon Carpentier), work on “The Mother.”
The young woman is enthusiastic but hesitant. “When there’s an audience it helps me,” she explains.
With its small group of shifting characters, the movie demonstrates Duncan’s own observation on “The Mother”: “I didn’t invent my dance; it existed long before me.”
It comes into full being when it is seen, and at this point the fourth character, an audience member played by Elsa Wolliaston ( herself a renowned dancer and choreographer), becomes the focus. She is powerfully moved by what she witnesses. The film — and Wolliaston along with it — then contracts and exhales in a quietly potent finale.
“Isadora’s Children” is made with such unusual delicacy that it may elude the grasp of audiences who demand things such as, well, plot. But its sensitivity is rare and valuable.
Marika Rizzi, left, and Manon Carpentier, in “Isadora’s Children.”