Birds of Paradise (2021)
I enjoy ballet, although I was never very good at it (tap was my thing), but I think it’s beautiful and fascinating. I always wonder how dancers feel the first time they go en pointe. Ergo, movies about dancers and the dancing world are intriguing to me, such as the 2021 film, Birds of Paradise.
Kate Sanders (Diane Silvers) is a student at a Parisien ballet school, which is having a contest to see who can win a spot at the Paris Opera Ballet. Naturally, the competition is stiff. Her chief rival is Marine (Kristine Forseth) who’s known for her two-facedness. She makes friends and then stabs them in the back. She just happens to be Kate’s roommate. Isn’t that convenient?
Overseeing the program is Madame Brunelle (Jacqueline Bisset), also known as “The Devil” because she’s so tough. For some reason she keeps calling Kate “Virginia” despite Kate’s terse corrections. Kate, who used to be a basketball player, has got an uphill climb because she hasn’t been as immersed in the dance world as her fellow contestants. She’s told that if she dances with Felipe (Daniel Camargo) she’s basically in because he’s the king of dance and everything else.
One by one contestants are eliminated and one by one they leave. In the meantime, Kate is caught in an underworld of dance, deception, and a shadowy club called Jungle whose bouncer is dressed as the Virgin Mary and whose price of admission is eating a live earthworm. One might even forget the contest is happening, but then Kate finds out someone revoked her scholarship. Her dad has had to sell the house to make up the difference.
Kate feels the pressure because she doesn’t believe she has a home to go back to, but at the same time she’s committed to dance because her late mom was a dancer. When Kate dances she feels connected to her mom.
Mean Girl Marine has her own problems. Her dad is the American ambassador to France and her mom wants her to make it in the ballet world for the prestige. Marine really wants to be a choreographer and ends up sleeping with Jamal, a married man with four children. She’s still in the contest, but her head may not be in the game as much as she seems to be.
Birds of Paradise is based on the A.K. Small novel, Bright Burning Stars, but in my opinion the novel is way better. For one thing, the novel’s characters have time to develop a real history with each other, whereas the film is Black Swan-lite. Only Black Swan is the better film and I’m saying that as someone who isn’t a fan of Darren Aronofsky.
Paradise is pretentious and muddled. The movie can’t decide if it wants to be artsy or metaphysical or quirky or insightful. It tries to be all things to all people and doesn’t really excel at any of them. It’s not even lit very well most of the time, which doesn’t do anyone or anything any favors.
And the characters are irritating. There wasn’t nearly enough done with Kate and Marine’s rivalry. These girls quickly go from catfighting to whispering secrets to each other from their shared bed at night. And if that seems to be setting something up, yeah, things happen. It’s all interspersed with intertitles counting down the weeks and days until the concert, which I honestly didn’t care about by the end of the movie. I wish Kate and Marine hadn’t been roommates so we would have time to wonder what happened next.
The ballet is nice, what little there is, but that’s about it. Most of the time this is not a feel-good movie. I found myself longing for Powell and Pressburger’s immortal Red Shoes, which revels in its fantasy elements and doesn’t try to do too much at once.
Birds of Paradise is free to stream for Amazon Prime customers. Rated R.
My grade: C
Principal cast: Diana Silvers, Kristine Froseth, Jacqueline Bisset, Caroline Goodall, Alice Dardenne, Oseil Gouneo, Eva Lomby, Daniel Camargo, Solomon Golding
Directed by Sarah Adina Smith
Screenwriter: Sarah Adina Smith, A.K. Small (novel)