40
The strength of the film is its portrait of a female artist at work, doing all the complex backstage and business chores her career requires.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
38
Like Loïe Fuller's serpentine dance, the film is structured on repetition: spinning and spinning but never actually taking us nowhere.
30
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
This movie, which stars Stéphanie Sokolinski, the French musician known as Soko, in the role of Fuller, only comes alive during the dance sequences.
40
More problematic, even if we accept the film as pure fiction, is its pedestrian construction and ill-conceived script, unlikely to spark interest in one of the most innovative and influential performers of the last century and a quarter.
90
Los Angeles Times by Katie Walsh
The Dancer is such a bold and assured film, wildly creative and sensual, that it feels far more sophisticated than a debut, and signals Di Giusto as one to watch.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin
An airy, prettily accoutered but essentially vapid feature debut for writer-director Stephanie De Giusto.
50
RogerEbert.com by Susan Wloszczyna
The Dancer clearly needed a better task master behind the camera. There are too many scenes of Fuller physically and mentally suffering for her art as she questions if what she does actually qualifies as dance.