About pointe shoes without showing off – Newspaper Kommersant No. 191 (7392) of 10/14/2022

The film “Step Forward” (En corps) by Cédric Klapisch, starring Marion Barbeau, a ballerina of the Paris Opera, and Hofesh Schechter, one of the leaders of modern choreography, was released in Russian distribution. It compares favorably with all other films about ballet and dance, says Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The plot of the film fits into one phrase: Eliza, the prima of the Paris Opera, gets seriously injured during La Bayadère, looks for an opportunity to start a new life and finds her calling in modern dance. The banality of the plot is deceptive: “Step Forward” is a unique example of a successful and publicly accessible study of the differences between classical dance and contemporary dance. In this balanced film, there is neither the violent trash of the Black Swan, nor the pseudo-historical passions of the Matilda, nor the implausible plot twists of the Bolshoi and other films that depict the ballet as an exotic planet, and the ballet dancers as incomprehensible half-crazy aliens. On the contrary, “Step Forward” is distinguished by a brilliant absence of exaltation, falseness and attempts to weave melodramatic patterns around a real and quite ordinary situation.

The convincing authenticity of the film is the merit of its authors. Screenwriter (together with Santiago Amigorena) and director Cedric Klapich, a regular at the Paris Opera, does not perceive the ballet world as a curiosity, although at first he admires the picturesque backstage. And the corps de ballet in white tutus, seated in the wings with their legs spread freely, and the boundless space behind the backdrop, and the shabby service ladders, and the seething personal life of the artists. Actually, this is the beginning of the plot: right before the performance, one of the “shadows” squeezes the heroine’s lover in the backstage nook, and Eliza-Nikiya, killed by an accidentally peeped scene, having lost self-control, falls from a big jet at the end of the ballet.

Marion Barbeau, the leading lady, was the first dancer of the Paris Opera in her life. A fan of the modern repertoire, in addition to impeccable classical training, she has an excellent command of the techniques of modern dance (it was not for nothing that she was chosen for the role of Marie by all three choreographers of the opera and ballet The Nutcracker by Dmitry Chernyakov). So it’s no wonder that all the dance scenes in the film captivate with the authenticity and variety of her dancing skills. The acting hypostasis of a ballerina is more surprising: she played the introverted Eliza so confidently and naturally, as if the film set was as familiar to her as the theater stage. The second hero of the picture was the famous Israeli Hofesh Schechter, a choreographer and composer (in the film – together with Tom Bangalter): he played himself – the creator and leader of the troupe. Moreover, in comparison with his performances, deafening with their loudly boiling brutality, in the film Schechter and his choreography looked amazingly subtle, psychological, even gentle – so that the obvious therapeutic function of modern dance did not need verbal justifications.

And yet, Schechter’s remarks at rehearsals (“It turns out – well, no – and okay. Don’t be zealous, save your energy”), as well as the programmatic dialogue of two friends about the difference between classics, which are all flight and poetry, and modern dance, deliberately mundane and “realistic”, once again emphasized the gulf between the elite ballet and democratic “modernity”. Once again, they drew a line between the “classic” exercise based on strict rules and striving for the standard and the laid-back naturalness of the “contemporaries”, whose main credo is to accept yourself as you are. Meanwhile, it is extremely difficult for ballet dancers to achieve the relaxation of “contemporaries”, internal and bodily. No wonder Eliza joins modern dance, portraying a “dead body” at a rehearsal: the ability to turn off muscles and will requires no less self-control than complex ballet steps. At the same time, the authors by no means romanticize the vulnerable and inevitably short profession of a ballet dancer. Any craft can be art, the director insists, mixing in the climactic scene a close-up of dinner preparation and Schechter’s rehearsals: shredded vegetables, meat, seasonings boil, intertwine and mutate as well as human bodies, to finally reveal culinary harmony on a plate.

But “Step Forward” is not a treatise on art, much less a saga about fortitude and overcoming difficulties. Fast-paced, light-hearted, chopped up into brief episodes, this film is immersed in French life, a little strange and charmingly different from ours. Here, a prosperous family does not rush to save the heroine in trouble. Here the ballerina sees nothing shameful in working as a cook’s assistant and waiter in the Brittany wilderness. Here, the guys are afraid to even look at the girl they like – Eliza herself will have to reach out with her lips to the face of the dancer, petrified from timidity. Here, a feminist is able to throw a scandal to her partner because of the “humiliating” compliment “How beautiful you are”, and at night settle the relationship with combat sex in the trailer. Here, a successful choreographer rehearses in a shabby hall with a toilet behind a curtain, and if someone needs it, the rehearsal is interrupted by general singing and clapping to drown out the sound of pouring urine. And all this life, not supported by any confidence in the future, or well-being, or ideology, or even the strength of family and friendship ties, for some reason looks surprisingly normal.