(PG) Directed by Bruce Beresford.
Li Cunxin’s autobiography was a best-seller so his story is familiar to many. One of seven sons of a poor rural family in the Shandong Province of China, he was selected to attend Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy at the age of ten. Li devoted himself to the harsh training and was inspired by Mikhail Baryshnikov. A turning point came when the director of the Houston Ballet, Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood), invited him to come to America where he replaced an injured dancer and stunned everyone with his performance of Don Quixote. Falling in love with dancer Liz Mackey (Centre Stage’s Amanda Schull) and realising the opportunities available in America, Li decided to stay.
Li is now a stock broker living in Sydney and Australian director Bruce Beresford filmed in China, America and Australia to bring his story to life. The recreation of Mao’s Communist China is particularly good and shows the stark contrast between the Communist China and ‘the land of plenty’. One of my favourite scenes of this film is when Li Cunxin’s mother is attacked by the local villagers because her son has decided to defect to the West. She yells back that her son was taken away from her so their anger should be directed to the authorities instead of towards a mother who has lost her son.
The film is carried by Graeme Murphy’s choreography and dazzling performances by Chinese born Chi Cao as the adult Li. Incidentally, both his parents worked at the Beijing Dance Academy, his father as a dancer and his mother as a musician, and Chi only migrated to England when he was 15 years old. He is a great dancer and very charismatic on the screen, and when attending the Perth launch of the film, you could see that he actually looks like Li.
***
