Polina, danser sa vie (2016)
Directed by Angelin Preljocaj

Film Review

Acclaimed choreographer Angelin Preljocaj hooked up with debutant director-screenwriter Valérie Müller to deliver this artful adaptation of Bastien Vivès's cult graphic novel Polina.  It was a challenging undertaking and whilst Polina, danser sa vie has considerable artistry - both in its visuals and remarkable set-piece dance sequences - it fails spectacularly to come together as a coherent piece of cinema.  Preljocaj took as his point of reference films as diverse as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948), Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot (2000) and the classic Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers dance musicals of the 1930s, and this could explain why his film ended up as a strange genre potpourri, endlessly slipping between social realist drama, musical rom-com and dance film.

The presence of Anastasia Shevtsova, a gifted 20-year-old professional dancer, in the leading role at least gives the film a solid focal point on which we can fasten our attention.  Preljocaj reports that he had auditioned over six hundred dancers before he finally discovered Shevtsova, who was then working with the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg.  In her first screen role, the charismatic dancer manages to fill the screen with her mesmeric personality and her dancing skills are utilised to the full by Preljocaj who, whatever his other failings as a director, at least knows how to make the most of his chief asset.  Juliette Binoche and Niels Schneider also show a surprising flair as dancers and lend impeccable support to the lead performer.

Given that Preljocaj's talents lie in choreography, it's no surprise that the film's main virtues lie with its dance sequences, which provide dazzling bursts of visual poetry to the film - the most memorable being an almost surreal sequence performed on snowy ground with an industrial complex silhouetted in the background.  As the title (an allusion to Godard's Vivre sa vie) hints, the film presents a series of tableaux representing the heroine's progress towards her destiny.  The more poetic sequences sit ill alongside those that are more realistically framed and this jarring mismatch creates a sense of disharmony that is totally absent in the original graphic novel and seems somehow wrong for the film.  Polina, danser sa vie is in essence an old-fashioned fairytale but the film fails to recognise this and instead tries to give itself a heightened reality with some random incursions into gritty social realism.  This doesn't take away the beauty of the more artistic passages but it diminishes the film overall and leaves it being a mere fraction of what it could have been.

Film Synopsis

In Russia of the 1990s, Polina is a young ballerina with a promising career ahead of her.  Driven by her exacting teacher Professor Bojinski she is certain to be admitted into the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet and no talented dancer of her age could ask for more.  But all this changes when she attends a performance of contemporary dance.  What she sees hits her like a revelation and she decides there and then that this is where her future lies.  Naturally her parents are horrified by Polina's decision to abandon classical dance and embark on something wildly different.  Accompanied by Adrien, a handsome young dancer she has taken a liking to, she travels to France to start a new career.  In Aix-en-Provence, she teams up with the modern dance choreographer Liria Elsaj and begins to forge her own artistic path...