Elle Fanning Ballerina

Elle Fanning Ballerina

Cast: Elle Fanning, Dane DeHaan, Maddie Ziegler, Carly Rae Jepsen
Director: Eric Summer, Éric Warin
Genre: Family
Rated: G
Running Time: 85 minutes

Synopsis: Félicie is a young orphan from Brittany with only one passion: dance. With her best friend Victor, who wants to become a great inventor, they devise a madcap plan to escape the orphanage for Paris, the City of Lights where the Eiffel Tower is still being built! Félicie will have to fight like never before to surpass herself and to learn from her mistakes, to make her wildest dream come true: becoming a prima ballerina at the Paris Opera...

Ballerina
Release Date: January 12th, 2017

Characters

 
Felicie:

Look
With her copper colored braid and adorable turned-up nose, orphan Félicie is a cunning vixen who can sniff the promise of Paris even from far off Brittany. She looks like a twig draped in rags, but she'll swirl her patched skirt and kick her clodhopper heels at the first drop of a treble clef. She is skinny as a spindle, and on the road to glory.

Character
Her almond-green eyes glimmer with longing for elsewhere. Cheeky, she defies authority at the orphanage. Reckless, she mocks the Statue of Liberty. Clever, she double-crosses bratty Camille and steals her identity. But starry mirages can be dangerous: the chickadee will have to hold on for dear life until she emerges as a swan.

Dream
Whenever three little notes of music tinkle from her ballerina music box, Félicie's heart trips the light fantastic. She repeatedly sends orphanage dishes and tiles flying. The institution is allergic to -petits rats', and so Félicie flies the coop. Literally. In Paris, she refuses to play Phantomette of the Opera: she wants to be belle of the ball!

Moment of glory
The climax, of course! Like Alex, face-to-face with a cold-shouldered jury in Flashdance, Félicie affronts her nemesis – in this case, Camille the prodigy pain in the neck – in a showdown using arabesques and sidesteps. Tutus in a tizzy, and if looks could kill… Who will perform the mythic 'grand jeté", the -open sesame' to Beginner's Ballet at the Paris Opera?

Cult line
To Merante's crucial question – Why do you dance? - Félicie hits the nail on the head: 'Because dance has always been part of my life. It was there with my mother when I was a baby... And it's there today, thanks to Odette...Dance helps me to live... to be myself".

 

Victor

Look
A cross between Remi in 'Nobody's Boy" and Oliver Twist. Victor has a sweet orphan's face: cauliflower ears and little boy cowlicks. Irresistible, even if he's dressed like the ace of spades (think striped corduroy pants, ouch!) and his fingers are slathered with snot. He also wears a cockscomb fashioned out of a dishwashing glove. For fancy-dress parties only.

Character
A Paris urchin, the real deal. A blowhard rebel who sounds like a born Parisian. Bingo: it is in the French capital that this Breton Gavroche will come of age. A braggart who invents himself a life larger than life, Victor becomes awkward when faced with the chopping block of feelings. A hint: he has a crush on a ballerina. Is it mutual?

Dream
To become the greatest inventor of all time. Gyro Gearloose Junior's claim to fame is the creation of mechanical wings for chickens. They don't work, they won't fly, dang it... Paris offers him the ideal lab for his experiments: as Gustave Eiffel's boy Friday, he makes the master's atelier implode. Young people today!… Finally THE crowning achievement: reeducating the Parisian pigeon to save Félicie.

Moment of glory

We can thank Victor for the film's ruthless chase scene. The Great Escape from the orphanage, in 2'30" flat: he sends Félicie flying, he slaloms between menhirs aboard a crazy cart, topples their pursuer's motorbike and hangs on to the Paris train with one little finger. Indiana Jones must be turning in his grave…

Cult line
Victor, bowled over when his mentor Gustave Eiffel finally takes notice of him: 'My boss has finally spoken to me! He said: -You're crushing my foot, you degenerate mutant runt!' Not bad, huh?"

 

Camille

Look
Paris Hilton had an ancestor, Camille Le Haut: a hoity-toity blonde, with a wasp waist sculpted to let her shine, and a pink headband that scrunches her neurons. Spoiled by Régine's fortune, she is her miniature version: squeezed into the same greenish dress as her mother, she reeks of self-satisfaction and never sweats, bourgeoisie oblige.

Character
A snotty pout is her lethal weapon of disdain. It's Félicie who bears the brunt: Camille doesn't hobnob with Orphan Annies, she mortifies them. A whizz kid raised by Mama, she swears by technique and is a stranger to passion. Smiles are optional. She is the snob you love to hate!

Dream
Toe dancing across the Paris Opera stage, even if she has to break her rivals' ankles on the way. Winning at 'France has Got Talent", going to the top of 'The Dance Kids" or bust. Camille is wired to land the role of Clara in the Nutcracker. It remains to be seen whether it was a fairy or witch bent over her cradle with that as her wish…

Moment of glory
With a compendium of rotten tricks to make all the Nellie Olesons of the world green with envy, Camille pulls out all stops the first time she meets Félicie: with a passel of egocentric poses and insults ('Weasel", 'Wisenheimer", 'Wimp"), and the orphan's beloved music box flying out the window. Showgirls blackened by the Countess of Ségur.

Cult line
Among other discourtesies unleashed on Félicie: 'You were spying on me... is that it? Admiring the most marvelous dancer you have ever seen! Come on and confess, you pathetic weasel".

 

Rudolph

Look
Prince Charming in the flesh, a man in tights: sleeker than Gene Kelly, blonder than Robert Redford in a sunflower patch, Tom Cruise's smile topped off by an accent from the steppes, Rudolph is a heart throb at the bar. Voted Monsieur Hottie 1879 by the tutu brigade.

Character
Rudolph Dimitiev Stanislaw Artiem Rankovsky Shumsky the Third. And that's about it in a nutshell. Classy, cultivated, incandescent: who can resist this budding Noureyev who spins like a top, gambols and pirouettes? Félicie is thrown for a loop, and Victor is pathetically speechless. The cock fight looks lost in advance … unless his proud emboîtés go before the tumble and fall. -T would be a shame, but who can tell?

Dream
Rudolf is already the Dancing King. He can admire his glory and beauty reflected day by day in the waxed parquet at the Opera. All he needs is love: as prince he prances, as dandy he dances for Félicie's delight. Gold star: he flatters the grace of her arabesques. No star: he spends his days in tights. Thus spake Victor.

Moment of glory
The plan was almost perfect: to thrill Félicie, a romantic ascent of the Eiffel Tower still under construction, with fireworks to boot. In the end: a dud, because Victor beat him to it and then, utter disgrace, when he tries to box his rival using a technique based on a Cossack dance… K.O'd by braggadocio.

Cult line
A grand moment of solitude when he declares to Félicie: 'Herewith a poem I wrote in your honor: See the lovely bird. It flies ... in the sky... None can catch it! Birdie!... Birdie!…cheep cheep, cheep cheep! Hah! Craw, Craw! Craw, Craw! Like it?".

 

Odette

Look
A sad bun and layers of drab clothes. Odette haunts the corridors of the Opera brandishing vitrifying O'Cedar. She limps. The only thing lacking is to put out stale bread on her balcony. And still… there's that little whiff of Marie-Claude Pietragalla… The aristocratic way she holds her head, the somber gaze that has never lost its glow. The key to the mystery is but an entrechat away.

Character
Careful, one woman may be lurking behind another! Odette may have withdrawn into Trappist silence, she removes her mask for flibbertigibbet Félicie. She has a heart that melts under her ironclad armor, she's a soft touch behind a cantankerous coat of varnish. She is benevolent, she takes in an orphan. She is maternal, she dispenses sense and sensibility. And the curriculum does not stop there…

Dream
Odette once burnt her wings trying to reach the heights. Before Félicie came along, all she longed for was her bed once she had cleaned up her Gorgon boss' mess. Today sounds the hour of sweet revenge: bread and water, Herculean training for litless Félicie, whom Odette promises to help fulfill herself. The dream, still relevant, has merely switched ballerinas.

Moment of glory
Odette's tutorial is irreproachable: working on basics, keeping your toes supple and hard, holding your pointes. Tiresome at first, Félicie's workouts become pure magic in a building's backyard. She has to jump to reach a bell attached to a branch, then land on her feet like a feather, grazing the surface of a puddle with her pointes. Time stands still when Odette looks at Félicie with bracing affection.

Cult line
To Félicie: 'Give vent to your anger, your hurt, your pain, your joy! Let it all wash over you. That is your essence as a dancer... Live the music! Feel it!". What a pity that Odette hadn't coached Rocky. He would have blown away Apollo Creed before the end of the first round.

Mathurin

Look
Let Harry Potter loose in a chocolate factory and a week later you'll find a Mathurin. With his delectable porcelain baby face and oversized spectacles, toddlers would love to use him as a teddy bear. With a top hat hiding his bangs, and his hunched silhouette, he also resembles a notary public or an elected official from the boondocks. It's hard to put your finger on the boy…
Character
Sugar is sweet, and this guy too. A loner, he lets down his hair with Victor whom he met during a night of Paris revelry. Big-hearted, he introduces him into the sacrosanct atelier of Monsieur Eiffel. A good friend, he becomes a willing third wheel once Félicie smiles. His only weakness, he pees his pants when up against monster-ess Régine. We understand.

 

Dream
Mathurin is a puzzle, a mystery, a sphinx. Is he also seething with desire to become an inventor? For the moment, his job is to slavishly sharpen his employer's pencils. Is he secretly mooning over a coquette? At this stage, a slam bang blow out is onomatopoeia, not an opportunity for a slow dance. And so?

Moment of glory
This apprentice excels in the art of pantomime. One of his big hits is a postmodern version of Cyrano de Bergerac, when Félicie erupts into the atelier to beg forgiveness. Victor sulks under the table and then betrays himself. Mathurin invents three hands for himself, two voices, and won't give up. The illusion is drop-dead awesome, Penn & Teller would be proud of Mathurin.

Cult line
'I don't know much about girls... And I'll admit they even scare me a little... but I get the feeling she [Félicie ] won't come". Just what it takes to reassure Victor who is eagerly waiting for his lady love up on the Eiffel Tower.

 

Louis Merante

Look
Like any ballet master who respects himself, he has a snide eyebrow and a mean cane. Brylcreemed to the root, and with his shoes polished with royal jelly, he has opted for the raven black spring-fall collection. A bucket of ice water on ballerinas, who shiver at the slightest sign of a peeved goatee.

Character
Louis Merante is a terror. His favorite sentence, at the end of each class: 'Leaving us today is…". A tottering balancé deserves capital punishment: "You look as light as a mournful elephant". He has a point. It's just that we perceive a quivering lower lip whenever he catches sight of Odette's chignon.

Dream
What can a choreographer aspire to when he holds the world record, 187 fouettés (in other words, pirouettes,) in one solo? Uncover the new star of his Bar Academy. And since voting by text message is not yet in vogue, he will audition anyone anywhere, but arbitrarily, mercilessly eliminating one petit rat after the other, until he finds a pearl to fly in the 'Nutcracker".

Moment of glory
Merante is stern but fair. He proves it by snubbing the harridan Le Haut when Félicie runs into trouble: she did, of course, steal Camille's identity, but she remains in the running for the race to the ballet. There are ripples of fear and trembling in the crowds. Merante is inflexible. Classy. And then there is the appeal of the bun, we are told.

Cult line
To one of his pupils who apparently will not be going on with the adventure: 'It was a catastrophe served up with a sauce of disaster, and a side order of inanity. Off with you!

 

Regine Le Haut

Look
Cruella's craggy face, Cinderella's stepmother's frozen grin and the Coppola Dracula's fork-like crown: and that's the spitting image of what is hardly a poster girl for motherhood. Chic nouveau riche, Régine sweeps her bottle-green train over the smelly plebs. The purple lipstick against her pale foundation reeks of (bloody) revenge.

Character
Scorpio ascendant dragon. She is THE villain of the story: possessive and dictatorial with Camille; vile with Odette, whom she slave-drives like a slattern; disgustingly hateful of an orphan's consummate pliés. With nothing to redeem her, you can give her up for lost.

Dream
When not occupying a place of honor in a literary salon, or heading the 'Society for the Improvement of Women's Lot" (as far back as 1878), she prefers to exercise her tyranny on the help and tighten the reins on Camille. Régine lives life vicariously: not in front of a TV set, but from her box at the Opera, from where she can already picture her daughter's top billing.

Moment of glory
The looniest in the film, with its Tex Avery-style escape. Régine has lost the battle, but means to win the Third World War: Godzilla in skirts, she races Félicie to the top of the Statue of Liberty (made in France, after all) where she plans on proclaiming her own version of the truth. She ends up KO on the ropes. End of her mission: accomplished!

Cult line
Pitilessly dragging Camille to an audition, the snake hisses: 'Tendu! Plié! Tendu! Plié! Tendu! Plié! Only losers get tired! Go on! I want this role, do you hear me!". A toothy slip of the tongue.

 

Ballerina
Release Date: January 12th, 2017