Anne Fontaine brings together a beautiful cast around the Maurice Ravel mystery

Mysterious, Maurice Ravel? At least discreet, even secret. Anne Fontaine is interested in his year 1928, when he created his “Boléro”, one of the most performed works in the world, a hit of classical music.

Regular director, with twenty-three films since 1992, Anne Fontaine devotes her new feature film to the composition, in 1928, of Bolero by Maurice Ravel, one of the most performed musical works in the world. Because it is more about the music than the man, even if the two are inseparable.

Boleroreleased in theaters Wednesday 6 March, brings together Raphaël Personnaz, Doria Tillier, Jeanne Balibar and Vincent Perez in a film which recreates a fascinating era, with an innovative cultural abundance.

A modern world

In the carefree, high-society Paris of 1928, dancer and choreographer Ida Rubinstein commissions a ballet work from Maurice Ravel. Since 1918, he has been considered the greatest living French composer. But if he is inhabited by music, he feels at this time incapable of transcribing it, of writing. Surrounded by three women, worldly, Ravel curls in on himself, remembers his mother, his youthful failures, the trauma of 1914, and his impossible loves to extract his Bolero.

There are many musical biopics : Amadeus by Milos Forman is unforgettable, and Ken Russell has directed Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Liszt. One of Anne Fontaine’s successes is to have produced more of a “biopic” of a piece of music than a biography of its composer. The director enters the Bolero in an era, through its perception by Ravel. The first scene, where the musician is fascinated by the deafening rhythmic noise of machines in a factory, introduces his perception of the entire sound world, as the source of his inspiration. If nature is major there, the industrialization of the modern world now plays a part.

Three women

Anne Fontaine talks about the years 1920 with delight, served by a superb artistic conception, in the image of one of the most sophisticated eras, when Paris was shooting the last arrows of its splendor. Raphaël Personnaz, who plays Ravel, is in every way, elegant, charming, if not irresistible, which doesn’t stop him from going for broke. Jeanne Balibar gives all the exuberance of a captivating Ida Rubinstein, Doria Tillier is the impossible love and Emmanuelle Devos, the soul sister. A trilogy of women which finds its origin in Ravel’s mother. In the eyes of Anne Fontaine, they are all in the heart of Maurice Ravel. Also, there will never be any question of the father.

The director carries her subject with passion while promoting emotion. Often nocturnal in its lights, passing from Paris to Normandy, Bolero delighted by its subject : the origin of an artistic creation. Experimental, variation on 18 minutes of a theme which lasts only one, the Bolero by Ravel won over the audience from his first performance. Anne Fontaine’s film imagines his creation while lifting the veil on the man who seems to have wanted to disappear behind his music.

The sheet

Gender : Biopic
Director: Anne Fontaine
Actors: Raphaël Personnaz, Doria Tillier, Jeanne Balibar, Emmanuelle Devos, Sophie Guillemin, Anne Alvaro, Alexandre Tharaud
Country : France
Duration : 2h
Exit : March 6, 2024
Distributer : SND

Synopsis: In 1928, while Paris was living in the rhythm of the Roaring Twenties, the dancer Ida Rubinstein commissioned Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Paralyzed and lacking inspiration, the composer flips through the pages of his life – the failures of his beginnings, the fracture of the Great War, the impossible love he feels for his muse Misia Sert… Ravel will then dive deep within himself to create his universal work, the Boléro.