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TOUT PRÈS DES ÉTOILES: LES DANSEURS DE L’OPÉRA DE PARIS/ ÉTOILES: STARS OF THE PARIS OPERA BALLET

The French title of this documentary from Nils Tavernier (Bertrand’s son) translates roughly to "Up Close and Personal with the Stars of the Paris Opera Ballet." And in that regard Tavernier delivers, taking his hand-held camera from the rehearsal studio to the stage, talking with individual principals, watching the coaching process, giving us performance glimpses. You can’t knock the repertoire, either: Swan Lake, La Sylphide, Balanchine’s Apollo, Pierre Darde’s Orison, Jiri Kylian’s Doux Mensonges, Maurice Béjart’s La IXème Symphonie (that is, Beethoven’s).

But anyone who’s watched a PBS documentary about American Ballet Theatre or the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden or saw the Violette Verdy video the Museum Fine Arts screened last year has seen this done much better. Tavernier starts by showing us an airplane taking off while a voiceover gives us facts and figures about the Paris Opera Ballet in the kind of officious deadpan Godard was making fun of back in the ’60s. The company is off to Japan, and even though we’ve just arrived, we’re invited to tag along on its whirlwind tour, taking in such exciting exchanges between dancer and director as "It’s something that devours you." "You seem to love it." "I think I do."

Back home, Tavernier plays the pushy, pretentious reporter as he asks probing questions like "How old are you?" and "What section are you in?" and "Is there an exam coming up?" One dancer explains that her teachers "weren’t violent or mean," but it’s clear that she’s not happy with the system, where joy seems in short supply. From time to time a title across the screen will announce "Rehearsal of Swan Lake: The Soloists," or something of that sort, as if you couldn’t tell. Tavernier keeps intercutting brief interviews with the "étoiles," but their names merely flash across the screen, we get no introductions or biographies, and what they have to say you’ve heard a million times ("It’s a rehearsal, so we’re working it out"). He even has the temerity to ask the understudies whether they’re hoping to go on that night. We do get tantalizingly brief glimpses of Béjart’s Beethoven Symphony performed in what looks like a basketball arena before 14,000 persons, but the highlight comes from retiring étoile Elisabeth Platel — "You’ve just shared something with your partner and the company and the audience, and you go home alone" — just before she gives her farewell performance in La Sylphide and then makes her farewell speech to the company. In the end, though, you have to ask whether Nils Tavernier, who doesn’t demonstrate any knowledge of dance, would have gotten to make this documentary if he weren’t a famous filmmaker’s son. In French with English subtitles. (100 minutes)

BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Issue Date: January 9 - 16, 2003
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