75
Levan Akin offers up a swooning gay romance as the centerpiece from which all of his other ideas radiate.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
And Then We Danced works because of a tender and heartfelt performance by Levan Gelbakhiani.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
No good performance can hide the fact that what happens during roughly the first hour is perhaps beautifully laid out and told but also extremely familiar. There is an expectation that Akin, also credited with the screenplay, will somehow step it up in the second half with a new twist or unexpected insight. But quite the opposite happens, as the narrative becomes both more melodramatic and erratic.
50
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
The cast perform with conviction, and the whole movie is attractively, solidly put together. But its dramatic components, fraught as they are, are tepidly delivered.
58
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
The dancing is mostly depicted in practice and rehearsal in a featureless room, captured in raggedly cut handheld sequences that betray the movie’s modest means. If Akin knows how to direct better than this, he rarely shows it. But if he never displays a knack for visualizing the physicality of dance (more impressive rehearsal footage can be found in about five seconds on YouTube), he does a decent job of conveying the frustration and passion it inspires in Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani, a professional dancer).
83
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
The result is at once empowering . . . heart-wrenching . . . and inspirational.
60
Gifted as both a thrilling dancer and a nuanced actor, Gelbakhiani’s magnetic presence goes a long way toward papering over some of the more timeworn plot elements . . . and the film should make audiences clamor for more vehicles that feature his seemingly effortless ability to radiate joy.
91
It’s one of the year’s best gay films.
80
Screen Daily by Lisa Nesselson
An instantly engaging tale of a young male dancer’s sexual awakening in contemporary Tbilisi, And Then We Danced is personal and political, romantic and educational.
63
Manages to tell an over-familiar coming out story with sensitivity, and a Georgian accent.
This film is beautiful. It introduced me to traditional Georgian dance and I came to care for all the characters, especially Merab and Irakli. My favorite part of this film is the soundtrack. There is lots of traditional music used in the scenes at the dance academy, but I really love the Robyn and Abba songs used. Not only are they great songs that make the scene even better, the choices also exhibit the tension between the Georgian tradition and the pop music young people dance to in clubs and at parties. Merab's inner joy is so present when he dances and the ending beautifully highlights this aspect of his dancing.