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Polina(Polina, danser sa vie)

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

France · 2016
Rated PG-13 · 1h 52m
Director Angelin Preljocaj, Valérie Müller
Starring Anastasia Shevtsova, Juliette Binoche, Niels Schneider, Miglen Mirtchev
Genre Drama

In this drama based on the graphic novel of the same name, Polina, a talented Russian ballerina, leaves behind her rigid expected path at Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet to pursue modern dance in France. Her decision starts her down an unexpected and difficult path towards self-discovery.

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

60

Village Voice by

Images planted early in the film betray the path Polina will take; when we watch her move freely in the woods and commune with a moose, we guess that ballet may not be the last stop on her professional train.

70

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

If this film’s directors, Valérie Müller and the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, don’t offer much overt material on Polina’s inner life, it’s because they don’t have to: the point of Polina, and this movie, is that her dancing is her being.

100

Wall Street Journal by John Anderson

The creative process is always an elusive thing for filmmakers to capture, but amid all the startling visuals and the splendid acting, Polina rises, gloriously, to the challenge.

75

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

As Polina, Shevstova delivers a performance that feels wonderfully unforced, if that’s the right word, in a role that can only be called “driven.” There’s almost an emptiness about her character. Polina’s expression of self is all on the surface — at least initially.

75

RogerEbert.com by Sheila O'Malley

The most important thing Polina does—and it is testament, again, to the involvement of Preljocaj, a man who has devoted his life to dance—is that it shows that the everyday life of an artist is not made up of catharsis and accomplishment, triumphs and breakthroughs. Those moments only come after years of hard work, of failing and trying again.

70

Los Angeles Times by Sheri Linden

Shevtsova, until recently a dancer with the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, doesn’t quite pierce the narrative’s two-dimensionality. Through Preljocaj’s ecstatic choreography, though, she goes deep, and Polina’s story finds its language and its pulse.

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