English Title: Rise
Director: Cédric Klapisch
2021
Comedy/Drama
Running time: 2hrs
Cert: 15
French with English Subtitles
“Nothing short of a star-making turn from Marion Barbeau, who portrays a prima ballerina’s dramatic comeback from a devastating injury, in a film that effortlessly captures the sensual and kinetic energy of dance”
Élise thought she had the perfect life: an ideal boyfriend and a promising career as a ballet dancer. It all falls apart the day she catches him cheating on her; and the same day she suffers a career ending injury. The path to physical and emotional recovery will lead her away from Paris to a picturesque location in Brittany, where she finds friends, a new love and the freedom of contemporary dance.
This is an inspiring story that tells us how sometimes, the worst thing that could happen may turn out to be the best. There is a life-affirming quality in how the film captures the recovery process: it is not a solitary act but a communal one, as the healing of Elise’s body is made possible only by being among the collective of other creative souls. First-time actor Barbeau, a trained ballet dancer in the Paris Opera, gives a beautiful performance that communicates the emotional inferiority that exists in the physicality of dancing, bringing to mind Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948).
