Mao's Last Dancer

Editorial

So you think you can dance? Is it because, as a child, you were taken from a peasant village and drafted into a Communist ballet school which forced kids to get en point? Years of dancing being dumbed down by reality TV programs should not have dulled your senses to the unusual stepping up from the streets of Li Cunxin, a real-life Chinese dancer who defected to the US in the 1970s and who in 2003 published his best-selling autobiography, Mao's Last Dancer, on which this film is based.

Bruce Beresford's first Australian co-production in a decade pays under-stated tribute to Cunxin, but does so in stodgy if presentable fashion. For a biopic about a graceful bloke who caused an international fracas and exposed his family to great danger, this respectful melodrama feels sanitised for easier consumption of issues that remain politically sensitive.

Contrasts between "Red" China and the "Red, White and Blue" United States  flow smoothly when Cunxin (Birmingham Royal Ballet principal dancer Chi Cao) is on groovy secondment to the Houston Ballet in the early '80s. And flashbacks to his impoverished Chinese childhood — shot with period nuance on location — paint a clear outline of the physical and mental hardships Cunxin experienced.

But strong emotions aren't readily summoned by this elegant staging. Indeed, apart from the beautiful ballet performances and the reminder of historical import, Mao's Last Dancer is a life story that should leap and bound dramatically, but that seems constricted by the telling. A dissident teacher hauled off by Chinese officials? Cunxin's rapid engagement to an American dancer? An embassy stand-off? All should be raw and affecting, but each feels politely recounted. Sydney standing in for Houston but still looking like Sydney symbolises that Mao's Last Dancer feels retouched, rather than real.

Hilton Thomas