“I lost myself in my own music,” admits Maurice Ravel (an excellent Rafael Personnaz in a sober and hushed register). With sensitivity, the filmmaker Anne Fontaine (Coco before Chanel, Gemma Bovery, Police) was interested in the composer, one of the most influential, with Debussy, in French classical music. If his impressionistic feature film is not without its lengths, Fontaine succeeds in his bet to define this mysterious, asexual and very cold man, an “ice volcano”. But inhabited by a rich world of sonic chimeras.
At once biographical, intimate and fanciful, Bolero explores Ravel’s complex personality, focusing on the origins of the creation of the Bolero. A century after its creation, it is said that not 15 minutes go by without the famous “hit” being played somewhere in the world! The film does not neglect other pieces of his work (including his famous piano concertos) and his life: his Oedipal relationship with his mother, played by Anne Alvaro; his discomfort with the women who loved him, such as Misia (Doria Tillier). Nor his tragic end. Suffering from aphasia, Maurice Ravel died at the age of 62, in 1937, following a brain operation.
Under the excellent musical direction of pianist Alexandre Tharaud, the film tells the difficult birth of a masterpiece. Without being a great film, Bolero has the merit of making us enter the mind of a genius. A man both aware of his talent and haunted by doubt. Because the path that leads to success is strewn with pitfalls and failures.
” THE Boleroit is the march of time that advances”, illustrates the composer, to explain its success. However, according to Ravel, it is a “masterpiece unfortunately empty of music”. The creator had a love-hate relationship with his Bolero.
The work was commissioned by Ida Rubinstein. This patron, star of the Ballets Russes and a colorful character, is played with excess by Jeanne Balibar (unforgettable Barbara, moreover, in another biographical film). As hard on himself as he was uncompromising towards the performers of his pieces, Ravel reacted very badly when he saw – in rehearsal – his ballet danced for the first time by Rubinstein… A comical and revealing scene.
The composer of The Pavane was a rather withdrawn man, but still of his time. He wanted to make an ode to modernity with this popular classic, drawing inspiration from the noise of the machines in the factories in the suburbs of Paris to compose it. The film begins with several versions of the Bolero in the world. And ends with an energetic performance by Paris Opera Ballet star François Alu.
A spectacular ending for a film that navigates between realism and dreaminess.
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Musical biographical drama
Bolero
Anne Fontaine
With Rafael Personnaz, Jeanne Balibar, Emmanuelle Devos
2 hours