Mao's Last Dancer

This first-cabin director returns to top form, with this revelatory film his best in years. More than that, Mao's Last Dancer is a masterpiece.

The delight of this film isn't so much in the tale as the telling.

Three actors portray the clumsy-but-limber Li in the years of his arduous training, when he is pulled between a teacher who's inspired by Mao and another who's inspired by bootleg videos of Mikhail Baryshnikov.

It's hard to know whether to take it to task as a film critic or as a dance critic. It isn't that it fails on either level - it's a serviceable movie - but it neither attempts nor achieves much of value.

While this is hardly "Breaker Morant," it's nowhere near as mawkish or cloying as it could have been.

A dramatic true story has been made into a diffident biopic.

The final image - a freeze frame of a pas de deux staged to resemble a triumphal Communist poster - perfectly captures the film's overall effect: it's strenuously brainless.

â

This beautiful film is based on true events. A young Chinese boy is selected to be trained as a ballet dancer. He travels to the US as an adult and becomes a star. When he decides he wants to stay here, it ignites an international furor. The performances are all solid and the story (although somewhat predictable) is told with skill and emotion by director Bruce Beresford. NOTE: I actually saw this in Sweden, but had a translator to help with the Chinese parts.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]