The penultimate night of the festival showed this tale of an elite level Ballet Dancer who, after coming to a shocking and saddening revelation, loses focus while performing, falls, and badly injures her ankle. Rarely, this film isn't about succeeding in your chosen passion, but is about learning and evolving when your passion becomes impossible. She is told she may need to have surgery, certainly won't be dancing again for months, maybe as much as 2 years - which is as bad as a lifetime. Newly single and in need of R and R, she packs a bag and heads off to a secluded country house for something of an artist's retreat with two friends who share an unorthodox, playfully aggressive but good hearted relationship.
Before long a contemporary dance troupe arrives, their vastly difderent style is of irresistable interest to her. We have already seen she was seduced by hip-hop break dancers.. coming from a highly technical, controlled ballet background, I imagine the freedom of movement, and crucially freedom of ideas was too much to resist.
She is invited to help with rehearsals, she needs only to lie motionless, but this ignites the flame. We watch as she discovers dance all over again, and she finds that mental recovery is half the battle, and essentially forgets about her injury.
The plot also follows her relationships with romantic interests, her sisters, a physical therapist, and absentee father, but the main one is her relationship with her passion and calling. Rightly so, the filmmaking reflects this aptly. The sequences of her dancing are given full attention and are the most memorable. The scene of her final performance shows her, mostly shrouded in darkness, dancing alone on stage for her new company, and new audience. It had echoes of the famous sequence in The Red Shoes (and also reminded me somewhat of the final performance in Whiplash and the first live one in La La Land among others) performong in front of a full audience but feeling like the only person/people in the world.
It is important that as a ballet dancer, we saw her performing a solo routine on stage, surrounded by other dancers all watching, and the more contempary dance (up until her final performance) is much more of a group affair with everyone relating and reacting to eachother. Perhaps this gave her a new zeal and an until them unfelt feeling of social importance and togetherness.
Both credits' sequences use a mix of classical and hip hop music. The opening gives the audience a clue about breaking barriers, but the closing credits have much more impact and insight once we have experienced this story with her. In some places it is listed as a comedy, which for me is wrong. There are comedic aspects, mostly from the aforementioned couple, but Rise has real heart, real jeapordy and real drama. It's a very good one, and will be high on the list of all the CIFF films I saw this year - which I will post soon.
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