Polina

Polina is given to a ballet teacher when she is small. Bojinski is a hard man; he cares about nothing but technique and breaks his pupils. Polina works for years and is accepted at the Bolshoi academy. For her family that is the end of everything; the girl is saved. Then Polina watches a contemporary dance performance. She leaves the academy. She goes to France and joins a company. The method there is entirely different; not technique but the body and improvisation. Polina cannot do it. She loses the place and starts working in a bar. Valérie Müller directs with Angelin Preljocaj. Anastasia Shevtsova plays Polina; Juliette Binoche and Niels Schneider are in the cast. It is a French production. The source is Bastien Vivès's graphic novel. Anastasia Shevtsova is a trained dancer and this is her first film. Preljocaj is known as a choreographer; the dance sections are his work. The matter it treats is giving up technique; Polina has to let go of what she spent years learning. The narrative does not set success as its goal and the ending rests on a performance. The Russian sections are cold and grey; the French ones are shot in lighter colour. The narrative leaves the character's emotional line weak and gives the weight to the dancing. Its limit is the screenplay; the narrative is in pieces, the characters thin, and the transitions abrupt. Who it is for: viewers who like dance films and adaptations of graphic novels. Who it is not for: it is episodic, cold, and the ending open.