5/5

Review by John P. Harvey.

Having made a success of a career in composing and conducting music, Maurice Ravel (Raphaël Personnaz) accepts a commission by the famous ballerina Ida Rubinstein (Jeanne Balibar) to write a spellbinding 20-minute work for a new ballet. Initially Ravel sets out to simply reorchestrate an existing work by another composer; discovering that that won’t be possible, he finds he must write something fresh. Unfortunately, inspiration eludes him until his yearning love for the regrettably married woman of his dreams, Misia (Doria Tillier), inspires a mood and the sounds of a working factory suggest rhythms and melodic fragments.

It is from these minute musical elements that Ravel builds a 17-minute ballet, Bolero, employing a one-minute motif in increasingly powerful repetitions by the orchestra — forever electrifying the world of popular music.

No ordinary biopic, Bolero is a fine work of art in its own right, and takes artistic subtlety to new heights. Its cinematographic style matches perfectly the exciting aesthetic milieu of Paris in the early decades of the 20th century; ambient and industrial sounds hint at melodic fragments of the finished work; and dialogue resonates beautifully with the time, with thoughts unspoken, and with ideas unacknowledged.

Acted with finesse by a sumptuously dressed fine cast bringing to life a period of rapid changes; shot in a gorgeous warm style on lavish sets; and recorded with a delicate ear for nuances of language and utmost attention to conveying the merest soupçon of music in everyday sounds, Bolero the film deftly draws the attentive listener into the magical slow brew that became Bolero the orchestral smash.