Polina, danser sa vie

Loved this film! It´s so real, so transparent and beautiful. And no more comments needed.

Grateful for this experience!

I found the scenes where we're watching ballet practice (the Bolshoi, or in Aix) to be very interesting. As an American, I found the European settings and atmosphere pretty compelling. But otherwise, this movie was unsatisfying and even boring at times for me. I honestly felt after watching that this was a niche film that would appeal primarily to students or aficionados of ballet, or folks employed in the field of dance.

In between the scenes of Polina rehearsing and taking dance classes, we see her becoming disillusioned, disappointed, lost. She spends the film wandering from one unsatisfying dance experience to the next. Ultimately she does seem to find a dance style that she enjoys, but by then I did not really care. I was just happy this tedious and unfulfilling journey was over.

If you read the IMDB user review by Teyss, that review does a good job of describing the movie. Some of the things Teyss admires, though, I found to be weaknesses in the film.

As far as the more unexplained or baffling incidents and scenes, well, I felt that I was supposed to understand something important about Polina from those moments, but I guess the importance eluded me.

This is not a movie I would normally seek out, a fictional story of a young dancer coming of age, dialog in Russian and French with English subtitles. But my public library just added this title and there were no requests yet. So I got the DVD, I watched it, I enjoyed it.

In the DVD extras we learn that the search for the lead dancer and actress involved looking at literally hundreds of young ballet dancers. They had to be an accomplished dancer, they had to be able to act believably, they had to be able to speak French. In the end Anastasia Shevtsova, still a teenager and a ballet student in Russia, was picked to play Polina.

It is her first feature film and she is remarkably good in the role, which requires several successive character transitions. First she has to be a student for the Bolshoi, then a seeker of modern dance in France, then a budding choreographer. The crux of the story is her desire to dance, a harder worker you will not find, but eventually she realizes she is not happy just trying to perfectly perform choreography invented by someone else. She wants to express herself in improvisational dance and choreography.

Excellent movie.

Thanks to the movie, I was able to realize I don't like modern (contemporary?) French ballet at all. I don't enjoy watching it, I don't get it.

I basically see the Russian main character as a silly reckless girl who ditched everything she worked for (Bolshoi) for her French boyfriend and ran off with him to France to follow her "passions", despite her family's sacrifice which enabled her to dance in the first place. So the story lost me by then. I didn't care about the characters, the plot, or the French dance (I found it too weirdly carnal with strange movements. )

I like the first part of the movie about Russian ballet though.

This is the best film on artistic integrity ever. It's very cinematic and subtly told but it's an emotional journey also, one you go on firstly with Veronika Zhovnytska as the very young Polina, and then with Anastasia Shevtsova as the teenage and adult Polina. It's her story, her development artistically, that you are fortunate to witness. I don't want to say too much about it because that will ruin it for you but this is one of those films whose images draw you in. Soak yourself in them and luxuriate in them till the end, an end you won't want to come as it's affect grows upon you. This is the best dance film ever but it's also much more than that. Excellent supporting performances throughout as well.