This documentary chronicles an American ballet dancer’s efforts to become a star in Russia.
Sometime in “Joy Womack: The White Swan,” determination starts to look like monomania, even if the directors, Dina Burlis and Sergey Gavrilov, never tip their hands on where they stand. Their documentary follows Joy Womack, an American ballet dancer who moved alone to Moscow at 15 with aspirations of joining the Bolshoi Ballet. After achieving that goal, she quit the company and made international headlines in 2013 saying that she was told she would have to pay a bribe for a solo role. (She subsequently joined the Kremlin Ballet.)
Drawn from seven years of shooting, the documentary charts Womack’s life in Russia, where she says success is more elusive than in the United States. In the U.S., she says, “If you’re a hard worker, you can make it happen,” but in Russia, “it’s like if you do not have the aesthetic, forget about it, just don’t even try it.” The film observes her efforts to reconcile what a ballet critic in the film calls a Broadway style with the Russian style. Womack also has to dance and medicate through injuries. Less than two minutes in, the movie shows her going for an M.R.I.
To a degree, Womack’s audacious career path has been shoehorned into a conventional profile format. The directors might have done more to illuminate Womack’s offstage life (you’re left wondering if she learned to speak Russian overnight), although they do chronicle the struggles of a marriage she entered into in apparent sincerity, while also knowing it would help her obtain permission to stay in Russia. Womack comes across as incredibly adaptable, which may be the film’s ultimate point.
Joy Womack: The White Swan
Not rated. In English and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. Also available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
