The Dancer

Loïe Fuller grew up in the American west, wants to be on stage and has no training in dance. She invents a performance out of long fabrics and coloured light: a dance that all but conceals the body and changes shape continuously. She goes to Paris and performs at the Folies Bergère. Then a young dancer arrives: Isadora Duncan. Stéphanie Di Giusto directs in her first film. Soko plays Loïe and Lily-Rose Depp plays Isadora, with Gaspard Ulliel and Mélanie Thierry. What interests the film is the cost of the art. Fuller's dance requires carrying the fabrics for hours and looking into stage lights that burn her eyes; she is worn down by her own invention, and the film keeps showing it. Loïe Fuller was a real person and counts among the founders of modern dance. She took out patents on the use of light and colour, worked with chemical dyes, and had a large influence in the artistic circles of her time. The Isadora Duncan strand is the second subject: the natural gift of the newcomer meeting a stage language built through labour. The dance sequences are the best thing in it and Soko performed most of them herself. It screened in Un Certain Regard at the 2016 Cannes film festival. Who it is for: viewers interested in the history of dance and in period biography. Who it is not for: the narrative cannot escape the biopic shape, some relationships are invented, and the pace drops in the second half.