Fall to Rise is a multi-character study that focuses on the friendship between Lauren (Katherine Crockett), the former star of a dance company who was let go because of injuries, and Sheila (Daphne Rubin-Vega), who joined the company at the same time as Lauren but had to leave after her first year under difficult and dramatic circumstances. The two women are united in their attempts to remain involved in an artistic profession that is known for burning out its talent both physically and emotionally long before middle age. Yet writer/director Jayce Bartok, who has acted since the late 1980s and is making his feature directorial debut, departs from thematic conventions of “comeback” movies to astutely contemplate emotional questions of identity and purpose.
While recovering from her injuries, Lauren became a mother. Yet she feels unloved by her infant daughter and also has problems connecting with her husband Ryan (Kohl Sudduth) who is deeply involved in his public interest legal work. It’s obvious that Lauren is still a graceful dancer — even in her everyday life she seems to make each of her physical movements with delicate precision — but even Des (Desmond Richardson), the supportive director of the company, feels that her time is up. Ryan also encourages her to let the past be and “go out on a high note.” Her much younger replacement in the company, Parisa (Masha Dashkina), even tells her in what seems to be a shot about her age, “I saw you dance when I was about ten. You were beautiful” (emphasis mine). At first, the only person who supports Lauren making a comeback is Annika (Tamara Tunie), an administrator who thinks their former star returning would increase donations for the struggling company. In truth, Lauren is disinterested in being a mother or a wife — in fact, she refuses to even name her daughter, which reveals Lauren’s psyche regarding motherhood on several levels. All Lauren wants to do is be a dancer, even if both age and injury defy her.
On the other hand, Sheila is more overtly an emotional trainwreck. Though she teaches dance to children, Sheila is often in an altered state of mind and tells her students inappropriate things about what professional dancers go through (disappointment, starvation, sex, professional jealousy, etc.) After Sheila and Lauren cross paths for the first time in two decades at a party for the company, Sheila starts coaching Lauren to get her back into the company. However, it becomes increasingly obvious that Sheila’s motives are not just altruistic. Lauren’s comeback brings her the mental focus that she desperately needs to deal with deep-rooted and unresolved issues from her past.
Like Black Swan before it, Fall to Rise is a movie about dancers that has such thematic depth that people with no eye for dance (like me) can still connect with it on an emotional level. While on the surface this is the classic comeback story, the characters also struggle with obsession and identity. It would be easy to dismiss Lauren as a poor wife and an even worse mother, but this is a woman who has been made fragile by having her profession taken away and replaced by a “normal” life that she has no desire for. Likewise, Sheila is also dealing with a very different type of emotional pain of someone who had never even been given Lauren’s opportunities. In other words, this is not simply a story of a has-been and a never-was, but two characters with a spectrum of emotional pain and how they connect with each other to resolve it.
One thing that threw me as a viewer was the choice by Bartok and cinematographer Kate Phelan (also making her feature debut as a cinematographer) to use a handheld camera in some scenes (like dance and key dialogue sequences) in which the movement is distracting. In a film that is so thematically about gracefulness, these scenes are jarring. Another jarring element was the soundtrack by the aptly-named Broken Chord, although the cacophony of music often reflects Lauren and Sheila’s state of minds. Since the music was already doing such an effective job of establishing the mood, the shaky camera effects are unnecessary. Crockett and Rubin-Vega are talented enough to convey their states of mind that such camera tricks aren’t necessary. Supporting characters, like Sheila’s old friend Magic (Jonathan Rua, who I would’ve liked to have seen more of), also help demonstrate how these characters have changed over time.
While I mentioned Black Swan before, Fall to Rise has more in common with another Darren Aronofsky film, The Wrestler. Both portray characters who have difficulty dealing with lives outside of their performances, even if they are physically no longer able to manage it like they once could. As with Randy “The Ram” Robinson, Lauren and Sheila are tied to “stage” identities that they feel more alive in than in the real world the rest of us live in. As someone who considers The Wrestler and Black Swan two of the finest films of the last decade, I think that Bartok has already found himself in good company with his very first feature as a writer/director.
Rating: An engaging study of the emotional difficulties of coming to terms with losing one’s identity (8/10).
Fall to Rise will screen on Saturday, April 5 at 8:00 PM at AMC Village VII (66 3rd Avenue, New York, NY) in competition for the First Time Fest 2014.
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