Art Smitten: Reviews - 2017

The Dancer (or La danseuse) is the feature debut of French director Stéphanie Di Giusto starring Soko as the revolutionary dance pioneer Loie Fuller. To start with, this film is beautiful. In the locations, in the cinematography, in the dance - the film itself captures and mirrors the longing of the protagonist Loie Fuller for the beauty she is searching for in dance. The film opens in the American Rocky’s where she is living in the wilds with her mad french father who encourages her love of art and her seemingly odd desire to become an actress. There are some charming scenes of a wild maned Soko soliloquising into the air or at taxidermy, perhaps as a set up as the humble roots of greatness but to my view represented a sheer singleness of mind on focused on stardom. Men are quite appalling throughout the film and it is shot in such a way that Loie is suggested to only find ease and success in the companionship of women. There are some amazing scenes of her and her troupe of dancers frolicking th