Legendary dancer Isadora Duncan lost her two young children, drowned when the car they were travelling plunged into the River Seine. Wracked by grief, months later she created a solo work, The Mother. A century later, told in three different excerpts, four women remount, in their own way, the work.
A delicate insight into creativity and interpretation, writer/director Damien Manivel choreographs the three moments – dance student Agathe Bonitzer learning the work through Laban notation and rehearsing alone in the studio. Two women – the patient teacher, the student – rehearse for a performance. And the third, a devastatingly beautiful interpretation by choreographer and teacher Elsa Wolliaston.
It’s quiet, it’s gentle – Isadora’s Children is a film of grace and nuanced beauty full of pathos.
Rating: 64%
Director: Damien Manivel (Takara – La nuit où j’ai nagé, A Young Poet)
Writer: Damien Manivel (Takara – La nuit où j’ai nagé, A Young Poet)
Main cast: Agathe Bonitzer (Sleeping Beauty, A Bottle in the Gaza Sea), Elsa Wolliaston (Cléo & Paul, Magdala)
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