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‘Boléro’ Review: An Elegantly Frayed Period Portrait of the Man Behind the Famous Music
A calm, charismatic performance from Raphaël Personnaz, elevates "Boléro," Anne Fontaine's absorbing biopic of Maurice Ravel.
Every 15 minutes, according to a title at the end of director Anne Fontaine ‘s latest film, someone on earth plays Maurice Ravel’s “ Boléro.” It’s a largely unprovable statement that is nonetheless borne out anecdotally by the familiarity of the tune, which crops up so frequently in concerts, movies, TV shows, commercials, dance recitals and at least one iconic 1980s ice skating routine, that it’s close to becoming sonic wallpaper. It’s a pleasant surprise then, that “Boléro,” Fontaine’s gently deconstructed Ravel biopic, while running long and never wholly airing out the stuffiness of “tortured genius” genre, does at minimum make us appreciate the music anew — its rustling snare drums, its snake-charmer woodwinds, its revving, roundabout rhythms. Artfully draped in Christophe Beaucarne’s handsomely antiqued photography, Fontaine and editor Thibaut Damade use a looping structure, not unlike the circularity within the piece itself, to illustrate episodes from his life before and after “Boléro.” So Ravel’s five-time failure to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, his service in WWI and the death of his beloved mother (Anne Alvaro) all unfold as we’re also glimpsing his post-“Boléro” decline in health, when the undiagnosed neurological condition that would kill him less than a decade later caused increasing confusion and forgetfulness.
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