Sex, drugs, and ballet don’t add up to much in Birds Of Paradise
Sarah Adina Smith’s Amazon dance drama isn’t trashy or soapy enough to be fun
Film Reviews Birds of Paradise
In 1984, the dance critic Arlene Croce wrote a notoriously scathing review in which she accused the choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch of reducing the art form to a “pornography of pain.” What Croce meant was that Bausch’s work was gratuitous, repetitive, and empty, but the phrase has always seemed like an apt description of a lot of dramas about dance. The type of porn they bring to mind is less the hardcore variety (which is what Croce was referring to), and more the softcore kind that used to play on late-night premium cable. There’s a basic formula: fit, attractive young people; some kind of prestigious dance academy; an expected quantity of abuse, humiliation, self-mutilation, injury, past trauma, mental anguish, and sex.
Sarah Adina Smith’s Birds Of Paradise, about two American dance students competing for a slot in the Paris Opera Ballet, belongs to this category. It has the boilerplate tensions, the trauma (a twin’s suicide), the overbearing parent. Of the two main characters, Kate (Diana Silvers), is the naïve one who’s come to Paris on scholarship. Marine (Kristine Forseth) is the glamorous one who smokes and knows her way around. We are reminded, as in all movies about ballet, that dancers’ feet are too horrific for the camera to even look at; that the teachers and coaches are manipulative and cruel; that dance is torture. The thought arises, as it often does with these movies: Why are these people dancing? Wouldn’t they be happier doing literally anything else?
Strangely, the question never needs to be raised in musicals, where dance is both a metaphor and a joy to watch. But in the world of the dance drama, it’s all about competition, jealousy, and the relentless sadism of one’s peers and instructors. In Birds Of Paradise, the latter (headed by Jacqueline Bisset’s mirthless Madame Brunelle) never say anything nicer than “Your appearance today is unacceptable.” This isn’t to say that the movie’s relentlessly dour: The look is squeaky clean and the film’s version of Paris (actually Budapest) is an airless cartoon where one can take strange drugs at cool underground clubs (leading to a very silly early sequence) and hook up with hunks with Louis Garrel noses who, post-coitus, immediately reach for the acoustic guitar. The real problem is that the film isn’t trashy, soapy, or stylized enough be fun.
Smith’s handling of the dance sequences is especially dull. They’re drably choreographed, randomly assembled, and vaguely solemnized with selections from Erik Satie and Arvo Pärt. Somehow, they never find an interesting angle on the dancers. That leaves us only with the predictable motions of plot. If Kate and Marine seem like opposites, then they will surely become friends or more. If they become friends, then they will surely come into conflict as the big competition approaches. If Madame Brunelle seems unprofessionally mean, it’s because she used to be just like them. There’s a reason why the better and more stylish movies about dancers are generally horror films: They recognize that, when it all comes down to it, these stories are mostly about watching good-looking people suffer and/or go insane. Better them than us.
19 Comments
Didn’t Motley Crue have a pornography of pain?
Has there ever been a depiction of professional ballet where the dancers are treated well and aren’t all victims of physical and psychological trauma?
Has there ever been a depiction of professional ballet where the dancers are treated well and aren’t all victims of physical and psychological trauma? I can’t think of one. And actually if you take out “a depiction of” the answer is might still be no.
Bunheads. Amy-Sherman Palladino was very good at making sure we knew the adults in this world were the actual problem.
Damn! I forgot Bunheads. That was a great show. Had there been a second season, maybe they would have delved into trauma and cruelty and methamphetamine use, but… whew!
The Red Shoes, kind of? While it has a cruel impresario character and a downbeat ending, I don’t think the main character is a victim of physical or psychological trauma, more just someone who’s torn between her art and a “normal” life.
As a doctoral student I published my first paper on The Red Shoes. Julian, Victoria’s composer husband, is every bit the antagonist as the cruel impresario (Boris Lermontov). We don’t see the bleeding, gnarled toes but there is plenty of punishment and misogyny afoot. The performance of The Ballet of the Red Shoes is a terrifying rendition of feminine fear (and fear of the feminine).
Bunheads?
Bunheads is a TV show. Cancelled much too soon.
Center Stage! It’s all soapy nonsense, but fun nonetheless.
I can only think of one movie where the heroine had a happy, joyful experience with her audition for a ballet company and comes away with a positive ending.Flashdance.
Dance Academy maybe. . . . . Bunheads
It’s not exactly high art, but Center Stage is probably the most accurate ballet film. It at least acknowledges that dancing can be fun sometimes! And certainly “get a good role in the student showcase to impress recruiters from various companies who are scouting talent” is a lot closer to how it works than “one student wins a prize (??) of a contract with Paris Opera Ballet” (a company that very famously only hires from its own feeder school)
Froseth should probably be cast as Anya Taylor-Joy’s sister at some point.
Interesting. She’s more in the Margot Robbie group to me, along with Jaime Pressly, Emma Mackey, and supposedly Samara Weaving.
These movies are so uninteresting to me. I’d watch a movie about how the world of ballet actually works, and I’d watch some dramatic-ass artsy shit, but this catty soap opera shit is just annoying.
You should check out the company from 2003(?). Its fictional, but about a real ballet company called the jeoffry ballet
“I’d watch a movie about how the world of ballet actually works, and I’d watch some dramatic-ass artsy shit, but this catty soap opera shit is just annoying.”This reminds me of how few films about restaurants and/or chefs are completely unrealistic. The closest I’ve seen in years is Burnt, and even that was more than a bit of a stretch for me. I’m a professional chef, and yes, there are second and third and fourth lives in this business, but it more often comes from being in the right place at the right time and folk you worked with years ago looking -you- up rather than the other way around.And the “catty soap opera shit” is the exact reason I don’t watch these food competition shows anymore. Gimme some old school Iron Chef (Japan) and call it a day.
As a former (non-pro) ballet dancer, the film that comes closest to capturing that world for me is actually Whiplash. It’s the only film that manages to capture both the appeal and the dark side of ballet’s intense perfectionism. Most ballet films are either boringly inspirational or boringly dark, they always feel like they’re written by people with zero interest in the artform.