‘Ballerina’: the ‘John Wick’ saga finds the crudeness of the ballet and Ana de Armas | Culture

Contemporary cinema continues to take advantage of the art of classic ballet, but not to show its beauty, but its crudeness, the severity of its essays, the physical and psychological suffering of its dancers, and the forge, according to the films, of true machines of resistance to pain and the crossroads of life. Thus, to titles set in their universe, but that they also took the opportunity to talk about emotional, personal or social aspects in principle outside their world —Cisne black, Girl, glass girls … -, Stories have been joined that simply take advantage of the roughness of their formation, and the consolidation of a way of living from the condition, to compose aguerrid female characters arranged for action and physical destruction, and even for espionage.

A Red Sparrow (2018), with Jennifer Lawrence passing directly, and for strength, of the essays at the Bolshói Theater to the brutality of training in Russian secret services and to become a sun of the 21st century, with hardly any difference, it happens now Ballerina, title belonging to the action franchise, espionage, neoner and martial arts John Wick, although deployed in much of its history as a spin-off, as a scouting product of the original story starring Keanu Reeves. Here is Ana de Armas who takes the reins, from one of the parallel plots of John Wick 3 (The Dance Academy run by Anjelica Huston), although the admirers of the saga will not run out of the ration of inexpressivity of the reborn for stardom Reeves.

Chad Stahelski, director of the four deliveries of John Wick Between 2014 and 2023, and David Leitch, co -director of the first and producer of all of them, both from the coordination of the work of Hollywood blockbusters before going to the direction, have renewed in these years the staging of the model. Much less cuts of assembly of the usual ones, and preponderance of the sequence plane so that the dances of death and survival can be better admired. In addition, in front of Tom Cruise’s exterior spectacularity in his series Mission: impossible, so influential, the creators of John Wick They have always opted for indoor artificial fireworks, for the abracadable choreographies of sudden impact, born in the martial arts cinema of Hong Kong, but taken to a new dimension. Ballerina, Although the unequal Len Wiseman, its new director, does not reach the gender brilliance of Stahelski and Leitch, keeps the ribbon close enough in a delivery that seems somewhat transition.

And what do we know? You will ask. That, as usual, the story is virtually nothing, in a back of revenge history of the usual. There are millenary sects and legendary mafias, espionage and hired murderers, and absence of any matter that comes out of the insubstantial. It is not the important thing; And it is not for his fans either. Those looking for some substance, who don’t even approach.

Paragraph apart deserves the weapons actress. If her character – a dancer trained to endure physical pain, emotional alienation and extreme discipline without breaking – is plausible in this universe of choreographed stylization and violence, it is because she herself has traveled a similar path in demand, although more silent and prolonged, from her days in Havana to her landing in Los Angeles. Hollywood has been made of arms at the stroke of effort, determination and a certain sense to choose roles that would allow it to grow and uncheck. Of the wounded sensitivity of Blonde to the lethal coldness of Ballerinanot only demonstrates an interpretive elasticity that many still underestimate, but a resistance – physical, mental and professional – that, as in his character, is born not of the artifice, but of the sacrifice.