La danseuse (The Dancer)
Director: Stéphanie Di Giusto
Soko's role: Marie-Louise Fuler
With: Lily-Rose Depp
Length: 108 minutes
Genre: biography, drama
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Written by Sarah Thibau and Stéphanie Di Giusto, The Dancer was released on 1 December 2017 in the US, and on 28 September 2016 in France.
The film is seriously beautiful. It starts off slowly, but by the time Fuller gets to Paris the story is riveting. Soko gives the best performance of her career as the Amerian expatriate dancer Marie-Louise Fuller. The film received six César Award nominations. Anaïs Romand won for best Costume Design, and Soko was nominated for Best Actress.
Set in the early 1890s, the film begins with the death of Fuller's gold prospector father, somewhere in the foothills of the American rocky mountains. (He is shot dead while bathing.) Fuller travels to New York to live with her mother who is heavily involved in the temperance movement, and resumes her acting career. (Fuller was a child actress before running off to the wild west with her father.) A wardrobe malfunction during a performance of a drama called "Quack MD" leads her to develop the "serpentine dance" which would make her famous in Paris.
She becomes infatuated with the young Isadora Duncan, another expatriate, and introduces her to French audiences. A relationship between Isadora and Loie never quite develops, but the infatuation (it is implied) helps Fuller to realize that her friend Gabrielle Bloch is in love with her.
Bloch and Fuller did not move in together until 1905.
Later in her life, Fuller became a good friend of Marie Curie, and a member of the French Astronomical Society. She held many patents for stage lighting, including the first chemichal mixes for gels and slides, and the first use of luminescent salts for lighting effects.
Writing for The Wrap, Ben Croll reviewed THE DANCER. "It just happens to be a pretty good movie with a number of sequences so breathtaking they will knock your socks off. Those sequences are moments of performance, where our main character dances before a crowd...Said dancer is Loïe Fuller, a real life cowgirl from the American West who made her way to Paris and became a star, astounding Belle Époque society with her "serpentine dance. French actress and singer Soko plays Fuller, and plays her to a tee. As a performer, Soko exudes a fevered intensity that makes her both a coldly compelling screen presence and somewhat difficult to cast. In Fuller, she finds her ideal showcase, capturing her character's fierce drive, crushing timidity and zeal for performance like no other actor could."
TRAILER
CAST
- Soko - Marie-Louise Fuller
- Gaspard Ulliel - Count Louis d'Orsay
- Mélanie Thierry - Gabrielle Bloch
- Lily-Rose Depp - Isadora Duncan
- François Damiens - Edouard Marchand
- Louis-Do de Lencquesaing - Armand Duponchel
- Amanda Plummer - Lili (Loie's Mother)
- Denis Ménochet - Ruben (Loie's Father)
- Charlie Morgan - Jeff
- Tamzin Merchant - Kate
- William Houston - Rud
- Bert Haelvoet - Macbeth actor
- Camille Rutherford - Macbeth actor
- Laurent Manzoni - doctor
- Matilda Kime - Louis' assistant
- Christian Erickson - Louis' advisor
- Nicolas Helpiquet - waiter
- Daniel Kramer - Taylor
- James Flynn - actor doctor
- Frans Boyer - flower delivery man
- Morgane Branchoux - American prostitute
- Hugues Martel - restaurant manager
- David Lantsoght - technician
- Marek Smejkal - lift attendant
- Scott Thrun - Pastor
- Petra Buckova - Houskeeper
- Douglas Hodge - Taylor
- Hideaki Tsuji - Japanese musician
- Shimehiro Nishikawa - Sada Yacco
MEN AT BAR: Nicolas Avinée, Marc Arnaud, Jules Pélissier
JOURNALISTS: Gérald Cesbron, Fabrice Cals, Pierre Giafferi, David Bowles
COWBOYS: Adrien Eymard, William Coulomb, Xavier Cacot, Carols Ruben Barrera
DANCERS: Marie-Lou Durand, Oanell Laborde, Doriane Aguilar, Johana Louis-Muci, Marie-Mathis Aubert, Mathilde Martinez, Pénélope Beaulieu, Tamara Milano, Philippine Groc, Mona Ninaud Mona Ninaud, Clémence Juglet, Leelou Seugnet, Ekaterina Kharlov, Nadia Tereszkiewicz