LA DANSE - LE BALLET DE L'OPÉRA DE PARIS

The sexiest movie of 2009

By DAVID DAY

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The purely observational style of documentarian (and Cambridge resident) Frederick Wiseman is exemplary at capturing the wonder of everyday life. From Juvenile Court (1973) to Public Housing (1997), the director has trained his lens on our world only to edit it into a contained—if sometimes quite long—narrative on humanity. It is reality at its most simple and most refined.

So when he turns toward something as simply gorgeous as Le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris—his subject for La Danse—magic is easily made. It might go without saying, but the Paris Ballet is made of unconscionably gorgeous people. As one of the world's youngest ballet companies (with an average age of 25), the celluloid is practically scalded with lithe and tactile imagery.

Wiseman avoids performance altogether, instead peering into practice, which is even more compelling. Perfecting a pirouette, the exactitude of a single plié, is as arduous as working a sculpture from a single marble block. The choreographers lean against the mirror, speaking an historic language, whether the ceaseless reinterpretation of The Nutcracker or the contemporary version of Samuel Barber's Medea.

And that's when things get interesting. It's beautiful to see tutus meticulously worked over in the costume shop or the static shots of the Ballet's ancient home, but the film comes to life in the most intense moments of the creative process.

In one sequence, two dancers work themselves toward mental exhaustion, their choreographer pushing them ever harder. The intimacy is palpable as she coils herself around him and he throws her to the floor. As the scene progresses, her breaths become audible, until she sounds like she is near tears. In another, the ballet masters repeat "Un! Duex! Trois!" over and over as a score of ballerinas keep missing their marks. Using the mirror as an extra canvas, Wiseman frames a single dancer alone in the studio, intensely focused on her every move, the audience a fly on the wall.

In the second half of the film, we enter a few dress rehearsals and, after hearing only piano accompaniment for much of the first 70 minutes, the addition of a more robust soundtrack brings the dancing to fiery life. One contemporary piece uses the electronic music of the Los Angeles producer Deru, a match that can only be described as a "techno ballet" ... très magnifique!

But Barber's Medea is a horror show. In retelling the story of filicide, a tortured dancer dumps buckets of blood on her children, drops the bucket on their heads and throws them to the ground before spinning away toward her own suicide. As ballets go, it is the most provocative and shocking thing I've ever seen.

There's much more to La Danse, specifically dance director Brigitte Lefèvre describing the influence of American investors or inspiring a young dancer to work harder (World's Next Top Ballet Dancer, anyone?), but the visual joy of seeing the company in training is a lifting of the veil that could only be granted to someone as unobtrusive as Wiseman.

At nearly 80 years old, Wiseman still stands alone in an age of self-reflexive storytelling and characters-as-cinema. While it's great to follow a crazy person around until tragedy befalls them or turn the camera on your massively dysfunctional family, Wiseman continues to remind nonfiction filmmakers that the "document" in documentary is, first and foremost, a verb.

LA DANSE
THROUGH THURSDAY 12.17.09
THE BRATTLE THEATRE
40 BRATTLE ST.,
HARVARD SQ.
CAMBRIDGE
617.876.6837
$7.75-$9.75
BRATTLEFILM.ORG

STARTING FRIDAY 12.18.09
COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE
290 HARVARD ST.
BROOKLINE
617.734.2500
$6.75-$9.75
COOLIDGE.ORG

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