Film

The Dancer

Name: The Dancer
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2016
Cast: Soko, Gaspard Ulliel, Mélanie Thierry, Lily-Rose Depp, François Damiens

Biopic

Loïe Fuller's rise from American obscurity to Belle Époque stardom through visionary dance and theatrical light. A passion project that moves between dazzling performance sequences and intimate, painful character study. For anyone drawn to the price of artistic ambition, the early cinema period, and women whose innovations were erased by history.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to portraits of obsessive makers, where the pleasure lies in watching an invention take shape on stage, in silk, light and the body's risk.

Skip it if you want a brisk story with clear stakes, since this is more a sequence of striking images and a studied, reverent mood than a tightly driven narrative.

What it asks of you: A little under two hours that unfold at a patient, painterly pace, letting long stretches of movement and quiet conversation do the work.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Midnight in Paris2011

Captures that same nostalgic pull toward the Belle Époque and early 20th-century artistic Paris, with similar questions about whether the past is actually better than our own time.

But It's Woody Allen being whimsical about romantic ideas. If you find that sensibility precious rather than charming, this won't win you over.

La La Land2016

A film about artistic obsession, mentorship, and the sacrifices demanded by genius—told partly through stunning performance sequences that make the emotional stakes feel physical.

But The tonal shifts between performance fantasy and quiet devastation don't work for everyone. Some find the ending saccharine rather than bittersweet.

Phantom Thread2017

Period piece about a genius at the height of their powers whose creative vision demands everything from those around them. Electrifying, intimate, and genuinely unsettling about desire and control.

But It's slow, sometimes airless, and deeply preoccupied with one man's neuroses. Not a comfortable watch, and the power dynamics remain deeply troubling.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Dancer

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Red Shoes1948

Both are obsessed with dance as a language that surpasses speech, and both explore the tragedy of being a woman whose body and genius are inseparable from her destruction.

Powell and Pressburger's film about a dancer torn between love and artistic immortality. The final ballet sequence is the most important twelve minutes in cinema. A film that understands what it costs to be consumed by your art.

But The love story operates in heightened melodramatic register that can feel dated. The film privileges the male composer's vision over the female dancer's, which is historically accurate but hard to watch.

The Favourite2018

Two women at the center of history, competing, betraying each other, fighting for agency in a world that barely sees them. Darkly funny and unexpectedly moving.

But The tonal whiplash between comedy and cruelty alienates some viewers. It's also visually busy in ways that can feel exhausting rather than playful.

A Star Is Born2018

Mentorship, jealousy, and the cost of ambition—a man watches the woman he loves eclipse him, and they both unravel. Bradley Cooper understands the quiet devastation of obsolescence.

But It's a remake of a remake, and the second half pivots into heavy emotional territory that some find manipulative rather than earned.

Ratatouille2007

A mentor figure who can no longer perform must watch their protégé's genius outshine them—funny and animated, but genuinely moving about legacy and letting go.

But It's a Pixar film, so it ends with resolution and forgiveness. If you want something darker about artistic betrayal, this won't satisfy that hunger.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street2007

Sondheim's masterpiece about obsession and revenge, with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter locked in a twisted dance of codependency. The musical numbers are gorgeous and terrible.

But It's grotesquely violent, often visually murky, and the score is demanding—not background viewing. The theatrical artifice will feel mannered if you're not in the mood for it.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street poster

The Rules of the Game1939

Jean Renoir's masterpiece about desire, class, and performance at a country estate. A portrait of how people destroy each other through charm and deception, and why we recognize ourselves in all of them.

But It's nearly four hours, in French, and deliberately paced in ways modern audiences find glacial. The tragedy arrives through quiet accumulation rather than dramatic action.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans1927

Silent cinema at its most visually inventive—a story about temptation and redemption told through movement and light. If you're curious where early filmmaking power came from, here it is.

But It's silent and nearly a century old. No dialogue means you're reading intent entirely from performance and composition, which requires active, patient attention.

Suspicion1941

Both explore the erotics and danger of submission to a charismatic man—one partner's genius or charm becomes the other's cage. Both are interested in how intimacy becomes a kind of performance.

Joan Fontaine in one of cinema's most unsettling performances as a woman who may or may not be married to a man who may or may not be trying to kill her. Hitchcock mines dread from uncertainty and intimacy.

But The ending compromises the film's intelligence to placate audiences of the time. The tonal shift from psychological terror to romantic reassurance feels wrong, because it is.