Based on the successful best seller, iconic Australian director Bruce Beresford brings "Mao's Last Dancer" to the big screen and to Toronto before it opens Down Under on October 1st. From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet.
In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own voice.
"Mao's Last Dancer" begins as clunky drama (verging on melodrama) that relies too heavily on flashbacks to rural poverty and rigorous dance training in Communist China. When Li arrives in America, the film drags as it stereotypes fish-out-of-water situations for humor.
Towards the final hour of the film, the story finds its rhythm by following a more chronological path, and the dramatic moments leading up to Li’s defection are more engrossing. Beresford’s handles the dance sequences beautifully, presenting them to the audience in full-frame, as if we were sitting in the theater seeing them live.
Lead actor Chi Cao gives a solid acting performance and marvellous dance performances opening the eyes of even a non-dance fan up to the undeniable beauty and fluidity to the form. Overall, the film is inconsistent but should appeal to vastly ignored dance fans and older audiences in Australia where Li Cunxin lives and speaks publicly.
