If you aren’t subject to the whims of a young girl in your life, you may not have seen one of the more recent movies directed towards the under ten set this holiday season; Ballerina is a French-Canadian English language film set in Paris, about a young orphan girl who dreams of dancing in the Paris Opera Ballet (It’s due for release in the U.S. in March under working title Leap!).
The animation is beautifully done and there’s just enough above-board adult humour to make sitting through a movie directed at children palatable, if not enjoyable. However, as a feminist and a woman, several key scenes don’t sit right and deserve critique.
First, the young heroine, Felicie, escapes the orphanage with her best friend, a boy named Victor. While the children are no more than 12 or 13 based on their apparent animated ages, throughout the film young Victor is constantly referring to Felicie as his “girlfriend” while she, in return, constantly refers to him as her “best friend.” At one point he attempts to kiss Felicie, then hastily covers this up as an accident. Felicie, for her part, seems keen on keeping Victor in the friends zone, constantly reiterating his importance as her best friend, while gushing about the other young man in her life, another ballet dancer who is intended to be a Russian rico suave type that all the other girls are enamored with as well.
This disconnect and the subsequent misunderstandings of consent on Felicie’s part that arise later in the film are disconcerting. Victor repairs a music box that is precious to Felicie, but instead of giving it back to her immediately, he holds onto the trinket until he can attempt to arrange a romantic private dining experience at the (still under construction) Eiffel Tower. He asks her to dinner, and assumes that when she closes the door in his face, she had somehow (miraculously) replied affirmatively. Even in the last scene, when Felicie pecks Victor on the cheek, in a friendly way (after he once again reiterates his interest in more than friendship and she kindly says he’s her best friend), Victor interprets the kiss as significant. He says, enthusiastically, “That’s really my girlfriend!” even though they have exchanged no comments of the sort that would solidify such a relationship. Indeed, the film ends without any sort of clarity as to their relationship, leaving that final declaration by Victor as the last statement as to their relationship.
Felicie herself demonstrates a constant refrain of putting relationships with boys ahead of her own dreams, when she blows off practicing and resting the night before the audition (upon which her future rests; if she doesn’t succeed in obtaining the part, she’ll be forced to leave the ballet school) to go on a date with the young Russian dancer. Of course things end spectacularly badly, when they encounter Victor, also prepared for his own (unconsented) “date” with Felicie, but the damage is done and Felicie has not practiced nor rested before her audition. Which she then blows, fantastically, and is sent back to the orphanage (and, thus, this is the point in the movie when my kid starts bawling).
To make matters worse, after Felicie has encountered Victor while on her date with the Russian dancer, she storms off after calling both boys on their idiocy, but then later apologizes and seeks out Victor to say she’s sorry for being an idiot herself. It’s unclear what she’s apologizing for, as she’s never accepted his advances in the first place, nor has she appeared to lead him on. Instead, it appears she’s apologizing for having been interested in another young man rather than Victor.
My daughter is still too young to pick up on the blatant failures of consent present in this movie, but one wonders if there was something lost in translation between the cultural components of this film (which was made in Montreal). The realistic portrayal of class in Paris of the 1800s, as well as the subtle key hints as to the character’s status and place in society, makes one wonder if the implied sexist actions throughout the film are intentional, rather than an attempt at a cutesy form of “boys will be boys” regarding Victor’s continued attempts to woo Felicie. I’m disappointed that a film so technically strong and vibrant in its portrayal of ballet would likewise fill itself with behavioral cliches by the lead character, as it seems to clash with the overall positive message of the film: never give up on your dreams (along with underlying mantras about working hard to achieve your dreams as well).