The things that get pushed to the touchlines and sidelines when the sheer unarguable force and flow of life becomes fuller and unequivocal. Fragile and translucent pastimes. The movies. So there was some time to see the second half of "The Red Shoes" yesterday.
The ballet sequence itself is hallucinatorily good. Vast hallways, balustraded promenades, clifftop skyscapes shape-shift and flood into eachother, as Vicky Page pirouettes and leaps across them. Clutches of dream-demons and progressively disfigured statuettes beckon, crawl and grasp. For an ostensibly pleasant romantic drama centred on a ballet company, it's gruesome and oneiric stuff.
The scenes in which Lermontov, the Diaghilev-esque impresario, gives vent to his opinions of the emotions of others are wonderful and ghastly. "Oh. Charming", he intones, with a corpselike mask. "I see", he says, only his teeth appearing to move. A deathly pallor seems to overtake any character who speaks of anything as irrelevant and selfish as their love; particularly Julian Craster, the hopelessly English composer, who appears to lose most of the blood and oxygen in his face as he attempts to tell Lermontov how he is 'feeling'.
Somehow the passage in the hotel, as Lermontov licks the wound of losing Vicky from the company and smokes continuously surrounded by fusty velvet and upscale chintz, reminds me of the late-period Sopranos episode in which Tony holes up in an NYC hotel-room, unsure of how to proceed with himself and over-exposed. Strange times.
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